“Leave Britney alone!”: parasocial relationships and empathy

ABSTRACT

The present study examined the relationship between parasocial relationships (PSRs; one-sided relationships with media figures), PSR characteristics, and empathy. We also examined whether people are biased toward those with PSRs, and whether people higher in empathy are less biased. Participants completed a survey that assessed whether they a) had a PSR, b) their satisfaction with, commitment to, and investment in the PSR, c) their degree of parasocial interaction (PSI), d) biases toward people with PSRs, and e) empathy. Results showed that empathy was positively related to self-identifying as having a PSR, commitment to and satisfaction with PSRs, and overall PSI. Results also showed that bias against individuals with PSRs exists, but that individuals higher in empathy are less biased. This research provides new insight into how empathy relates to PSRs and provides evidence of bias toward people with PSRs, as well as a potential way to reduce that bias (empathy).

KEYWORDS:

• Parasocial relationships
• empathy
• bias
• close relationships
• stigma

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/C3ek6/.

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/C3ek6/.

Notes

1. There were 124 participants who completed the bias measure for the analysis of Hypothesis 3 related to bias toward people with PSRs.

2. For this study we did not analyze quality of alternatives as previous research showed that people do not view PSRs as exclusive and do not consider alternatives with their PSRs (Branch et al., 2013).

3. All of the measures and data that support the findings of this study are publicly available via the following link: https://osf.io/c3ek6/

4. The skewness statistic for the level of self-identification of a PSR variable was 1.35. We conducted a square-root transformation on this variable and re-analyzed all of the analyses from the results section. The analyses remained largely the same and never became non-significant, thus we retain the original variable in this manuscript.

5. We conducted multiple regressions with gender and empathy as predictors with self-identification of a PSR, satisfaction, commitment, investment, PSI, and bias as the outcomes. When examining self-identification of a PSR, gender was not a significant predictor, p = .266. Empathy remained a significant predictor of self-identification of a PSR, β = .21, p = .021.

When looking at satisfaction, gender was not a significant predictor, p = .377. Empathy was still a significant predictor of satisfaction, β = .37, p < .001. For commitment, gender was also not a significant predictor, p = .371. Empathy was still a significant predictor of commitment, β = .40, p < .001. When looking at investment, gender is a marginally significant predictor, β = .16, p = .073. Females were marginally more invested in their PSR than males. Empathy remained a non-significant predictor, p = .146.

When looking at PSI, gender is a significant predictor, β = .18, p = .041. Females had higher PSI than males. Empathy remains a significant predictor of PSI, β = .30, p = .001. Lastly, when examining bias, gender is a significant predictor, β = −.20, p = .021. Males were more biased toward people with PSRs than females. Empathy remained a significant predictor, β = −.28, p = .001.

Thus, gender did not change our results. Although gender was sometimes a significant predictor, empathy was a stronger predictor.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Hailey Scherer

Hailey Scherer is a Masters student in the Experimental Psychology program at Radford University. Her research interests focus on parasocial relationships as well as popular culture and perceptions of individuals.

Salena Diaz

Salena Diaz is a PhD student at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Her research interests include stereotyping and prejudice, racial identity, and popular culture.

Nicole Iannone

Nicole Iannone is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Radford University. Her research interests focus on popular media culture as well as intergroup and intragroup belonging, with an emphasis on exclusion processes.

Megan McCarty

Megan K. McCarty is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Simmons University. She conducts research on the psychology of gender and diversity as well as small group dynamics, with a particular emphasis on gender and belonging.

Sara Branch

Sara Branch is a Research Solution Specialist. She has her PhD in social psychology with research interests in interpersonal relationships and individual differences.

Janice Kelly

Janice R. Kelly is a Professor of Social Psychology at Purdue University. Her research focuses on intragroup processes, including issues of inclusion, exclusion, and belonging, and on various gender issues.