The DOI matches its Crossref record; 3 of the 3 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Parasocial Romance: A Social Exchange Perspective
Abstract
Parasocial relationships are one-sided relationships that people hold with media figures. Although it has been previously demonstrated that people often feel strong friendships with people that they have never met, parasocial romantic attachments have not been well-studied. In the current study, we examined reasons why people form parasocial romances from a social exchange perspective by surveying participants on perceived costs and benefits of both real-life and parasocial romantic relationships (PSROMs), and on the strength of their PSROMs. We found that participants who reported stronger PSROMs also reported greater perceived benefits (relative to costs) of PSROMs, and that these benefits are surprisingly similar to those received from real-life relationships (RLRs). The results suggest that parasocial relationships are formed for similar reasons as real-life relationships, but that there are some unique costs associated with PSROMs. This research helps to explain why people form romantic attachments with media characters.
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“People develop onesided emotional bonds with media figures to satisfy belongingness needs, and these relationships can offer benefits such as improved mood and reduced loneliness [3, 21, 67].”
From Understanding Teen Overreliance on AI Companion Chatbots Through Self-Reported Reddit Narratives (2026) · cites this paper as [3]
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“Romantic relationships are characterized by positive affect or passion, commitment and physical intimacy in a reciprocal relationship (Moss & Schwebel, 1993; Sternberg, 1986).”
BackgroundGreenwood, D. N., & Long, C. R. (2011) · Communication Research · doi:10.1177/0093650210362687 · Cited by 142
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Understanding Teen Overreliance on AI Companion Chatbots Through Self-Reported Reddit Narratives
Namvarpour, M. (., Brofsky, B., Medina, J. Y., Akter, M., & Razi, A. (2026) · Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3772318.3790597 · Cited by 24
Metadata
- Authors
- Adam, A., & Sizemore, B.
- Venue
- Interpersona: An International Journal on Personal Relationships
- Publisher
- Editoriales Iberoamericanos
- Published
- 2013-06-28
- Volume
- 7
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 12-25
- ISSN
- 1981-6472
- Cited by
- 32
- References
- 3
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