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. 2024 Apr 8;14(1):8185.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-58069-9.

People perceive parasocial relationships to be effective at fulfilling emotional needs

Shaaba Lotun  1   2 , Veronica M Lamarche  3 , Ana Matran-Fernandez  2 , Gillian M Sandstrom  1   4
Affiliations

People perceive parasocial relationships to be effective at fulfilling emotional needs

Shaaba Lotun et al. Sci Rep. .

Erratum in

Abstract

People regularly form one-sided, "parasocial" relationships (PSRs) with targets incapable of returning the sentiment. Past work has shown that people engage with PSRs to support complex psychological needs (e.g., feeling less lonely after watching a favorite movie). However, we do not know how people rate these relationships relative to traditional two-sided relationships in terms of their effectiveness in supporting psychological needs. The current research (Ntotal = 3085) examined how PSRs help people fulfil emotion regulation needs. In Studies 1 and 2, participants felt that both their YouTube creator and non-YouTube creator PSRs were more effective at fulfilling their emotional needs than in-person acquaintances, albeit less effective than close others. In Study 3, people with high self-esteem thought PSRs would be responsive to their needs when their sociometer was activated, just as they do with two-sided relationships.

Keywords: Emotion regulation; Parasocial relationships; Responsiveness; Self-esteem; Social media.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Differences between targets on perceived need fulfilment, responsiveness, and closeness for Study 1. Error bars reflect the standard error.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Differences between targets on perceived need fulfilment, responsiveness, and closeness for Study 2, for YouTube PSRs (left) and non-YouTube PSRs (right). Error bars reflect the standard error.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The condition by self-esteem interaction predicting perceived responsiveness of the PSR in Study 3. Self-esteem is mean centered. High and low self-esteem are plotted at ± 1 SD from the mean respectively.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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