Chapter 5: Our Imperfect Personal Lens

KEY THEME: Our perceptions and biases filter our experiences of the world through an imperfect personal lens.

Research Story Parasocial Relationships

Have you ever felt like you really knew someone or had a meaningful relationship with, say a person on social media or a celebrity, without having ever met them or interacted with them in real life? You’re not alone! These one-sided relationships that feel like meaningful connections are a psychological phenomenon known as parasocial relationships. The distinguishing factor here is that they are non-reciprocal – so where you might feel like you really know them, they might not even know who you are.

Parasocial relationships were first defined by psychologists in the mid 1950’s in response to a rise in mass-media and the relationships individuals started to feel like they had with the performers on television and radio such as the famous Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz from the show I Love Lucy. These types of relationships are a perceived one-sided relationship with another person as if that person were an actual friend or peer.^[1] A parasocial relationship extends past just viewing the person or character as a media figure or fictional character but includes the belief in the potential for a relationship or treating that figure as a real-life relation. These can be pseudo relationships with a real person, such as a celebrity, athlete, or social media presence. However, these relationships are not limited to real people but can also occur with fictional characters such as a character from a book, movie, TV show, or video game. Example figures for parasocial relationships can include real people like Taylor Swift or members of a band like BTS or One Direction, and some examples of popular fictional characters someone can form a parasocial relationship with include Harry Potter (Harry Potter), Daenerys Targaryen (Game of Thrones), or Percy Jackson (The Lightning Thief).

Parasocial relationships tend to be formed at an early age, but anyone of any age can develop a parasocial relationship. For example, teens tend to form parasocial relationships with a wide variety of celebrities and characters^[2], but they tend to be figures who have a very large media presence^[3]. Not only are parasocial relationships formed with a large range of people and characters, but there are also several forms a parasocial relationship can take, such as friendships, familial relationships, mentorships, and even romantic relationships^[4]. There is research to suggest these parasocial relationships can decrease loneliness or increase social support in certain populations. Though, the literature is mixed in terms of the overall findings of benefits with having parasocial relationships on isolation, and social support.

Past research suggests gender differences in the strength and types of parasocial relationships formed, with boys tending to view their parasocial relationships as mentors while girls tend to think of them more as friends or romantic crushes, though what types of parasocial relationships non-binary people have is still an open area of research.

While it may seem a strange phenomenon, parasocial relationships seem less surprising when one breaks down one of the theorized reasons why these relationships are formed. In the past, before radio, television, or other forms of mass-media, any consistent interaction one individual would have with another would be due to them having a relationship in real life. It is only when more advanced forms of media and entertainment (radio, movies, wide-spread literature, social media, etc.,) were created that those voices and faces people interact with everyday might only exist in these more abstract forms. That in turn can become actual parasocial relationships. These parasocial relationships can even be considered social surrogates to the individual forming them, meaning they may take a role providing social support that mimics support gained from real-life relationships.

One other really cool thing about parasocial relationships is that parasocial relationships with a character or figure from a different social group (race, religion, sexual orientation, gender expression, etc….) may change people’s beliefs and attitudes towards Out-Groups. There have been several studies done on how exposure and parasocial relationships formed with characters in the LGBTQ+ community lead to participants having less prejudiced attitudes about the LGBTQ+ community^[5].

Parasocial relationships are an interesting and still relatively open area of research.  But the research we do have helps accentuate the point of how humans are very social animals and will find connections with others, even if they are fictional.

Reality

Philosophers have been arguing about “reality” for as long as philosophy has existed. Does our experience match up with reality or objective truth? If we feel something, does that make it real? From the perspective of psychology and neuroscience, we cannot experience anything in exactly the same way someone else does. This is because our “reality” is what we can absorb through our senses, and what we can interpret with our brains. Both are equally important – the sensations and the interpretation of those sensations.

Imagine standing on a city street corner (like the one in Figure 1). You might notice the rapid movement of the cars and people as they go about their business, the sound of a street musician’s melody or a horn honking in the distance, the smell of exhaust fumes or of food being sold by a nearby vendor, and the sensation of hard pavement under your feet. You are experiencing sensation and perception.

Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, a psychology and emotions researcher, provides a metaphor of the brain as being trapped in the dark box of your skull. The brain has no knowledge of what is going on around it in the world or in the body. The only way it knows anything is through signals from your body. Yet it doesn’t know what or where the signals came from  – it doesn’t know the source, only the result, and has to guess the cause.

For example, if we hear a loud bang, it could be a car backfiring, a door slamming, or a gunshot. The brain doesn’t know what the causes are, it only knows the effect, and so it has to guess. And the guess is important. Because we would do different things if it’s a gunshot versus if it’s a windy day that slammed a door.

How does the brain figure out what the cause is? Sometimes it guesses. And that guess is an “educated guess” if it is based on past experience. Sometimes scientists talk about this as the brain running a model of the world. In reality, the brain is running a model of its body, and it’s doing it in this really interesting way.

In psychology, we use the word category to refer to multiple instances of similar experiences. In essence, the brain is making a prediction by creating a category of instances from the past which are similar in some way to the present, in order to predict what’s going to happen next, what the brain has to do next, and what our experience will be.

When our brain creates categories, it does so by focusing less on physical features of the environment and more on the functions. For example,  apples would go into a category based on the function of apples being a food, fruit, nutritious, good for baking, etc. It doesn’t go into a category of “crunchy things” or “red things” as easily as it does “fruit.”

The thing is, these categories only exist in your brain. Because our brains are structured to construct categories based on the function of things rather than what they look like, or taste like, or smell like, humans can create something called “Social reality.”  This is when we collectively impose a function on objects that the objects wouldn’t have unless we gave it to them. For example, money. These are little pieces of metal and paper. We all agree that they have function and value – but this is socially constructed.

The metaphor of your brain inside a dark, silent box does not lead to the conclusion that you are trapped in that box. Your brain has this ability to take bits and pieces of your past experience and knit it into something completely new that you’ve never experienced before. We call this imagination.  Our brains are so good at imagining and creating predictions that sometimes we have trouble staying in the present and experiencing what is in front of us.  We have to practice controlling the capacity to fluctuate between being led by what’s happening inside that box- and being free of the constraints of our past learning and experience.

This is what is meant by the “imperfect personal lens.” Everyone has brains that are wired differently, depending on our experiences in the world – so my perceptions (predictions) cannot be the same as yours.

In the following pages we will examine how those experiences are made, zooming into details like neurons and prenatal development, and zooming out to relationships and culture.