Gayle Stever
Gayle Stever is a psychology scholar at SUNY Empire State College and co-author of a 2018 paper in Communication Theory that proposes a staged model of how a parasocial relationship develops.
Who they are
Stever worked in the psychology department of SUNY Empire State College in Rochester, New York, when she wrote the 2018 paper with Riva Tukachinsky of Chapman University. The paper appeared in print in Communication Theory in 2019.
Key papers
Key ideas
A staged model
The paper builds on a model of how relationships between people develop in stages. It describes the relational goals and parasocial interactions that belong to the stages, identifies the variables that predict engagement at each stage and outlines the outcomes.
A process, not a single feeling
The authors treat a parasocial relationship as a dynamic process and not as a single experience that varies in intensity, and they assess how well existing measures capture the stages.
Sources
- Tukachinsky, R., & Stever, G. (2018). 'Theorizing development of parasocial engagement.' Communication Theory, 29(3), 209-230. doi:10.1093/ct/qty032