What is a parasocial relationship?
A parasocial relationship is the one-sided bond an audience member forms with a media figure who does not know them. The research separates the moment of feeling addressed from the attachment that builds over time.
Answer to the question
What is a parasocial relationship?
A parasocial relationship is the one-sided bond an audience member forms with a media figure who does not know them. Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl introduced the underlying term, para-social interaction, in 1956. Later research separates the feeling of being addressed during one viewing from the attachment that builds across many.
Key takeaways
- Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl introduced the term para-social interaction in 1956, in a paper subtitled observations on intimacy at a distance.
- Dibble and colleagues (2016) tested 383 participants and found that a newer scale tracked the in-the-moment sense of mutual awareness better than the older PSI-Scale.
- Hartmann and a colleague (2011) ran an experiment with 198 participants: viewers reported the most intense parasocial experience when a performer addressed them both bodily and verbally.
- Tukachinsky and Stever (2018) proposed a staged model of how a parasocial relationship develops, treating it as a process and not a single feeling.
- Reinikainen and colleagues (2020) found in an experiment that a stronger parasocial relationship with an influencer went with higher perceived credibility, which went with brand trust and purchase intention.
Tim Wu reaches into the last century for a term to explain why celebrity coverage works as a business in The Attention Merchants. The term is para-social interaction, and its coiners, Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl, subtitled their paper observations on intimacy at a distance.
The modern phrase, parasocial relationship, names the one-sided bond an audience member forms with a media figure who does not know them. Wu uses the idea to explain a commercial fact, that a performer who feels like an acquaintance holds an audience in a way a distant name does not, a theme that also runs through [Why Do Celebrity Objects Sell for More](https://thewhyweproject.com/articles/why-do-celebrity-objects-sell-for-more).
One word that ended up with several jobs in research
The hyphen has since dropped out, and the word has stretched. Researchers apply the phrase parasocial relationship to television presenters, to celebrities and to fictional characters alike. David Giles, reviewing the literature in Media Psychology, found the concept widely used but thinly theorised. He listed three open questions: how the experience fits into ordinary social life, how it differs between kinds of media figure, and which processes over time turn a single encounter into a parasocial relationship. His own proposal was a model that places the experience inside everyday social interaction rather than apart from it. The bond is one-sided by definition, which sets it apart from the reciprocal ties covered in [The Invisible Weight of Belonging](https://thewhyweproject.com/articles/invisible-weight-belonging).
Wu's book belongs to the commercial strand of the story. It treats the bond as raw material that attention businesses learned to gather and resell, and it uses Horton and Wohl's coinage as the psychological explanation for why the arrangement pays. The academic strand asks a plainer question: what, exactly, is happening in the viewer, and how would anyone measure it?
Feeling addressed is not the same thing as feeling attached
In the view of Jesse Dibble, Tilo Hartmann and Sarah Rosaen, the field blurs two ideas under one word. Parasocial interaction is the experience during a single viewing, a sense of mutual awareness with the person on screen. A parasocial relationship is the longer attachment that builds across many viewings.
A finding about a short video says little about years of following a presenter.
The team tested the difference in a 2016 experiment. Dibble and colleagues showed 383 participants a short video of a woman who either spoke directly to the viewer or did not, then compared two questionnaires. The newer Experience of Parasocial Interaction Scale tracked the in-the-moment sense of mutual awareness better. The older PSI-Scale may be picking up longer-term liking, which belongs to the relationship, or something else. The authors drew a practical conclusion for the field: choose the measure to fit the construct, or the two will keep being confused.
For a reader meeting a headline about a parasocial relationship, the distinction matters in a direct way. A finding about a short video says little about years of following a presenter.
Hartmann and a colleague had introduced the newer scale five years earlier, in a 2011 paper that revisited Horton and Wohl's idea. In their experiment with 198 participants, a television performer spoke to viewers in one of four ways, varying whether the address was bodily, verbal, both or neither. Viewers reported the most intense parasocial experience when the address was both. The experience was also stronger among viewers who rated the performer as more attractive and among viewers with greater ability to take another person's perspective.
The same study linked a stronger parasocial experience to a greater commitment to social norms and to more enjoyment of the viewing situation. Only the address was manipulated. Attractiveness, perspective-taking and the later outcomes were measured, so they show association and not cause.
Direct address, in body and in speech, is a familiar habit of presenters. The experiment suggests it shapes the viewer's sense of being spoken to, which is the raw experience from which a parasocial relationship could later grow.
What the bond does for credibility, trust and buying intentions
If interaction is a moment, the relationship needs a timeline, and one arrived in Communication Theory in 2018, when Riva Tukachinsky and Gayle Stever borrowed the shape of an established staged model of how human relationships develop. Their account lists the relational goals and interactions that belong to each stage, the variables that predict engagement at each stage, and what each stage tends to produce. The authors treat a parasocial relationship as a process that moves, not as a single feeling that varies in strength, and they assess how well existing measures capture the stages.
That framing separates a first-time viewer from a long-standing follower. It also means a single-session experiment, however well run, captures an early slice of a parasocial relationship and not the whole course of one.
Influencer marketing gave the concept a commercial test in 2020, in an experiment led by Hanna Reinikainen. Participants watched a YouTube vlog in which an influencer endorsed a brand, under two conditions of audience comments, a setting that borrows the logic of [social proof in marketing](https://thewhyweproject.com/articles/what-is-social-proof-in-marketing). A stronger parasocial relationship with the influencer went with higher perceived credibility, and the comments from other viewers changed how strongly that happened. Higher credibility in turn went with more trust in the brand and greater intention to buy. The setting was one vlog format, and an intention to buy reported in an experiment is not a forecast of sales.
Wu's commercial account and this experiment come at the bond from different directions. Both treat it as something of use to anyone who wants an audience to listen, and both depend on which version of the bond is being described.
The phrase covers the feeling of being addressed during one viewing, the attachment that forms over many, and the credibility and buying that go with a familiar face, and because each is measured differently, a finding about one says little about the others and a one-video experiment cannot stand in for a long-standing follower's history.
Common questions
What is a parasocial relationship?
A parasocial relationship is the one-sided bond an audience member forms with a media figure who does not know them. Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl introduced the underlying term, para-social interaction, in 1956.
What is the difference between parasocial interaction and a parasocial relationship?
Parasocial interaction is the sense of mutual awareness during a single viewing. A parasocial relationship is the longer attachment across many viewings. Dibble, Hartmann and Rosaen tested measures built for each and found they do not capture the same thing.
Does a parasocial relationship affect buying?
In a 2020 experiment by Reinikainen and colleagues, a stronger parasocial bond with an influencer went with higher perceived credibility, which in turn went with brand trust and purchase intention. It was one video format in one experiment.
Is a parasocial relationship good or bad for you?
The research described here covers how the bond forms and how it relates to viewing and brand attitudes. It does not assess health or wellbeing, and nothing on this page is health advice.
Sources
Wu, T. (2016). The Attention Merchants. Seed book.
Horton, D., & Wohl, R. R. (1956). “Mass communication and para-social interaction: Observations on intimacy at a distance.” Psychiatry, 19(3), 215-229. doi:10.1080/00332747.1956.11023049 https://doi.org/10.1080/00332747.1956.11023049
Giles, D. C. (2002). “Parasocial interaction: A review of the literature and a model for future research.” Media Psychology, 4(3), 279-305. doi:10.1207/S1532785XMEP0403_04 https://doi.org/10.1207/S1532785XMEP0403_04
Hartmann, T., & Goldhoorn, C. (2011). “Horton and Wohl revisited: Exploring viewers' experience of parasocial interaction.” Journal of Communication, 61(6), 1104-1121. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2011.01595.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2011.01595.x
Dibble, J. L., Hartmann, T., & Rosaen, S. F. (2016). “Parasocial interaction and parasocial relationship: Conceptual clarification and a critical assessment of measures.” Human Communication Research, 42(1), 21-44. doi:10.1111/hcre.12063 https://doi.org/10.1111/hcre.12063
Tukachinsky, R., & Stever, G. (2018). “Theorizing development of parasocial engagement.” Communication Theory, 29(3), 209-230. doi:10.1093/ct/qty032 https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qty032
Reinikainen, H., Munnukka, J., Maity, D., & Luoma-aho, V. (2020). “You really are a great big sister: Parasocial relationships, credibility, and the moderating role of audience comments in influencer marketing.” Journal of Marketing Management, 36(3-4), 279-298. doi:10.1080/0267257X.2019.1708781 https://doi.org/10.1080/0267257X.2019.1708781