Parasocial Interaction: A Review of the Literature and a Model for Future Research
Abstract
This paper considers the phenomenon of parasocial interaction (PSI) used by media researchers to describe the relationship between media users and media figures (from celebrities to fictional characters). Although the concept has been used consistently across the past two decades in media research, it is argued here that it has not been sufficiently developed at a theoretical level to be taken up by psychologists. A number of key issues have not been addressed: firstly, how PSI might, as its originators put it, be "integrated into the matrix of usual social activity" (Horton & Wohl, 1956); secondly, how PSI might vary according to different types of media figure; and thirdly, what processes over time and media use bind user and figure into a "parasocial relationship." In this paper the existing literature on PSI is extensively reviewed, and an original model of PSI is developed for use in future social psychological research, which places PSI within the realm of ordinary social interaction and suggests ways in which different media use and different types of media figure interact to produce different styles of relationship. Finally, some applications of more detailed research into PSI are suggested.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Prolonged exposure to simulated relationships that disregard refusal, override emotional withdrawal, or reward relentless attention-seeking can normalize blurred boundaries and foster misconceptions about what constitutes care, intimacy, or agency in human relationships.
“Prolonged exposure to simulated relationships that disregard refusal, override emotional withdrawal, or reward relentless attention-seeking can normalize blurred boundaries and foster misconceptions about what constitutes care, intimacy, or agency in human relationships (Giles 2002;Turkle 2017).”
From Toward an Ethic of Synthetic Relationality: Identity, Intimacy, and Risk in AI-Mediated Roleplay Environments (2025) · cites this paper as Giles 2002
Cites
Mass Communication and Para-Social Interaction
Horton, D., & Richard Wohl, R. (1956) · Psychiatry · doi:10.1080/00332747.1956.11023049 · Cited by 4,380 · see citing works
Attribution in Social and Parasocial Relationships
PERSE, E. M., & RUBIN, R. B. (1989) · Communication Research · doi:10.1177/009365089016001003 · Cited by 559 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Qiu, L., & Benbasat, I. (2009) · Journal of Management Information Systems · doi:10.2753/mis0742-1222250405 · Cited by 737 · see citing works
Yuan, S., & Lou, C. (2020) · Journal of Interactive Advertising · doi:10.1080/15252019.2020.1769514 · Cited by 543 · see citing works
Kim, K., Schmierbach, M. G., Bellur, S. (., Chung, M.-Y., Fraustino, J. D., Dardis, F., & Ahern, L. (2015) · Computers in Human Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.chb.2015.02.011 · Cited by 185 · see citing works
Bond, B. J. (2016) · Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking · doi:10.1089/cyber.2016.0355 · Cited by 162 · see citing works
Greenwood, D. N., & Long, C. R. (2011) · Communication Research · doi:10.1177/0093650210362687 · Cited by 142 · see citing works
La Torre, D., Colapinto, C., Durosini, I., & Triberti, S. (2023) · IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management · doi:10.1109/tem.2021.3077195 · Cited by 110 · see citing works
The Effect of Audiences on the User Experience with Conversational Interfaces in Physical Spaces
Candello, H., Pinhanez, C., Pichiliani, M., Cavalin, P., Figueiredo, F., Vasconcelos, M., & Do Carmo, H. (2019) · Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3290605.3300320 · Cited by 33 · see citing works
Carpenter, J. M., Green, M. C., & Fitzgerald, K. (2018) · Scientific Study of Literature · doi:10.1075/ssol.18011.car · Cited by 33 · see citing works
Yankouskaya, A., Babiker, A., Rizvi, S., Alshakhsi, S., Liebherr, M., & Ali, R. (2025) · ACM Transactions on the Web · doi:10.1145/3765895 · Cited by 32 · see citing works
Walsh, J., Vaida, N., Coman, A., & Fiske, S. T. (2022) · Psychological Science in the Public Interest · doi:10.1177/15291006231161337 · Cited by 26 · see citing works
“Parasocial interaction operates as though it were a real-world social relationship; the audience develops lasting attachments that influence real-world aspirations (Giles, 2002).”
BackgroundBhat, M. (2025) · Proceedings of the AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society · doi:10.1609/aies.v8i1.36560 · Cited by 5 · see citing works
Dsouza, M. P., Shetty, A., D’Souza, S. E., Buthello, E., & Gudi, N. (2025) · Sage Open · doi:10.1177/21582440251318806 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
“Drawing parallels from the para-social interaction theory (Calvert, 2017; Giles, 2002; Rubin & McHugh, 1987), we argue that viewers tend to imitate the actions of the media character, in this case, the lo-fi girl.”
Key social media travel influencer traits impacting followers’ tourist behavior
Kılıçarslan, D., & Caber, M. (2026) · Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology · doi:10.1108/jhtt-07-2025-0588 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
- Authors
- Giles, D. C.
- Affiliations
- Coventry University (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Giles, David C.
- ORCID
- Giles, David C.
- Venue
- Media Psychology
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2002-08
- Volume
- 4
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 279-305
- ISSN
- 1521-3269 (ISSN-L)
- 1532-785X
- OpenAlex
- W1997475706
- Cited by
- 1,245
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 126 · 2025: 125 · 2024: 98 · 2023: 116 · 2022: 79 · 2021: 89 · 2020: 82 · 2019: 57 · 2018: 56 · 2017: 62 · 2016: 57 · 2015: 47 · 2014: 42 · 2013: 33 · 2012: 36
- FWCI
- 146.25
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Media Psychology (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Media Influence and Health
- Social Sciences › Communication › Media Studies and Communication
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Networks and Communications › Media and Digital Communication
- Keywords
- parasocial interaction, media figures, celebrity, fictional characters, media use, social psychology of media, parasocial relationships, media users, theoretical model
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
