Who has never thought “what a shame” when reading about the separation of a famous couple? Who has never shed a tear when watching a particularly moving scene involving characters from a TV series, film or video? Not to mention when an actor, singer or celebrity dies: the sadness we feel can feel surprisingly authentic. At first glance it is a paradox: rationally we know that those people are not part of our lives and, in the case of fictional characters, we even know that they do not exist at all. Yet the emotional involvement is real. This happens because our brain is extremely skilled at building social bonds and, in some cases, is able to do so even in the absence of reciprocity: a phenomenon which in psychology is defined as parasocial relationships and which social networks have contributed to making more frequent and visible.
What are the parasocial relationships that make us fall in love with TV characters: studies
The concept of parasocial relationship was introduced by scholars Donald Horton and Richard Wohl in 1956. In their article “Mass Communication and Para-social Interaction”, they described in particular the bond that the public can establish with television characters, perceiving them almost as acquaintances and friends, even in the absence of a mutual relational exchange.
According to the two researchers, parasocial relationships are one-sided relationships, in which a person develops feelings of familiarity and involvement towards someone who, on the other side, is completely unaware of his existence. With the arrival of social media this phenomenon has amplified enormously. Influencers and celebrities share aspects of their private lives every day, speak directly to the camera, show their daily lives, difficult moments and successes. All this contributes to creating what they called “distant intimacy”, often described in popular language as the illusion of intimacy: the feeling of really knowing that person, almost as if they were part of our social circle. It is therefore not surprising that any event, positive or negative, that concerns the lives of famous people ends up involving us emotionally.
And in fact: do you know, for example, that sense of sadness or loss that some people experience when a celebrity dies or suddenly leaves the public scene? This is what is now called parasocial grief. An emblematic case was that of Princess Diana’s death in 1997. Millions of people, even if they did not know her directly, participated in the mourning and many described their pain with expressions typical of personal relationships, stating that Lady D was like “one of the family”. Scholars interpreted these reactions as a collective manifestation of parasocial relationships.
Similar phenomena have also been observed after the deaths of other celebrities. For example, G. Sanderson and P.Cheong, in 2010, analyzing online reactions to the death of Michael Jackson, showed how many people expressed pain comparable in characteristics to that felt for the loss of a loved one, sharing memories, messages of condolence and stories of the emotional bond built over the years through his music and his media presence.
Why do we feel so close to celebrities: mere exposure effect
To explain the phenomenon sufficiently comprehensively, we must take into consideration more than one psychological mechanism.
The Mere exposure effect. Described by psychologist Robert Zajonc in 1968, it explains that the more we are exposed to a stimulus, the more we tend to perceive it as familiar and, consequently, evaluate it positively. Repeatedly seeing a celebrity’s face, hearing their voice or following their daily life causes the brain to process them as a predictable and stable presence. It doesn’t mean that we truly consider her a friend, but that she begins to occupy a space in our social and mental landscape (we feel, in a certain sense, “part” of her world).
The comfort zone: Several studies suggest that parasocial relationships can offer a temporary sense of companionship and security, especially in times of stress, change or loneliness. A 2009 study by Jaye Derrick, Shira Gabriel, and Kurt Hugenberg, for example, showed that after experiencing social exclusion in a laboratory, participants felt less alone simply by thinking about their favorite TV character or watching a clip of the series they followed. The authors defined this phenomenon as social surrogacy: media characters can function, at least temporarily, as a source of psychological comfort, taking on a compensatory function.
Again, narrative transportation, that is, the ability of stories to “transport” us within them, making us experience the emotions of the protagonists as our own. According to narrative psychology, human beings interpret reality by organizing events in the form of a story. We don’t simply memorize a succession of facts: we organize them into a plot, we attribute meaning to the characters, the difficulties they face and the way their stories evolve. For this reason, we can become as attached to the story of a celebrity as to that of a fictional character (have you ever felt sorry for the end of a relationship between two characters? Or for the end of your favorite TV series?)
To be precise, in a 2011 study, psychologists Dara Greenwood and Christopher Long observed that single people with a greater need to belong and higher levels of attachment anxiety tended to develop more intense parasocial bonds, but in reality these relationships are extremely common even among those who have a rich and satisfying social network.
In other words, whether fueled by familiarity, repeated exposure, or the need to feel closer to others, parasocial relationships are part of the normal functioning of our lives and, in themselves, do not constitute anything pathological.
The reasons why the brain gets involved according to psychology
If we move into the neuropsychological field, parasocial relationships are a manifestation of a broader phenomenon: the brain’s extraordinary ability to involve itself in the experiences of others, even when they are observed through a screen.
In 2001, psychologist Jonathan Cohen proposed that when we follow a media character, we enter into identification processes that involve three fundamental components of social cognition:
- Empathy, that is, the ability to share the emotional states of another person;
- Perspective taking, or the ability to imagine the protagonist’s point of view;
- Absorption, which allows us to “put ourselves in his shoes” and anticipate his thoughts, emotions and behaviors.
From a neuroscientific point of view, these processes involve the brain networks of social cognition, that is, that set of areas that we use every day to interpret the emotions, intentions and behavior of the people we interact with. For the brain, observing someone or living a certain experience means, at least in part, simulating it internally, arousing a certain emotional involvement.
This does not mean that the brain confuses reality and fiction. We know perfectly well that a character in a TV series does not exist or that a celebrity is not part of our life. However, to understand emotions and intentions, the brain uses the same social cognition mechanisms that it uses in everyday relationships.
The way the brain processes stories also contributes to making the involvement even more intense. Neuroimaging studies conducted by neuroscientist Uri Hasson have shown that when multiple people watch the same movie, their brain activity tends to synchronize in areas involved in attention, processing emotions and understanding the narrative.
This is also why we can laugh, be moved or feel sorry in front of a screen. Not because the brain confuses what is real with what is imaginary, but because it uses the same cognitive tools with which it interprets and understands people’s experiences in everyday life.
