How Loneliness Impacts the Psychology of Parasocial Relationships
Humans have at least two unescapable tendencies when it comes to social interactions: We can’t help being judgmental, and we can’t help trying to figure out what the other person is thinking.
Within seconds of seeing someone, we’re already forming ideas about their internal world. Of course, we can’t exactly know what another person is experiencing, and so we construct a model of it. It’s our best guess. This process goes by many names including Theory of Mind, mentalizing, or social cognition. At the end of the day, it comes down to creating an internal model of another person’s mind.
As social creatures, we do this naturally and without effort. It feels so automatic, in fact, that we hardly realize that there’s any processing going on at all. You glance over say, at the next driver in traffic, and viola - you automatically have an idea about what’s in their head. We can’t ever experience another person’s consciousness directly, and so this internally generated idea is the next best thing.
This process of social cognition is, of course, heavily involved in human relationships. As you get to know a person over time, the model becomes richer and more detailed. Your romantic partner knows, for example, that you’re exhausted when you come home from work, but get a boost of energy if there’s a good sports game on TV. Human personality is nuanced, and social cognition allows for these quirky inner worlds to be shared.
But here’s where the psychology of loneliness comes in. When we are deprived of these close relationships, this modeling process goes into overdrive. It leads us to develop in-depth models of people we hardly know, such as celebrities. We have a model for their internal experience, which also comes to include a relationship with them. That is, we’re in a relationship with them, but they’re not in a relationship with us. This is called a parasocial relationship.
What is a parasocial relationship and why do they develop? Let’s dive in.
The Impact of Loneliness on Social Cognition
The term was first coined in the 1950s when televisions became prominent in American households. Donald Horton and Richard Wohl were the first to observe the phenomenon. Many viewers weren’t just enjoying the likes of “I love Lucy” and “The Lone Ranger”. Instead, they felt a strong, life-like bond with the characters and the “illusion of a face-to-face relationship”.
While celebrities are common objects of parasocial love, these relationships can develop with everyday people as well. And it's here where we see social cognition taken to a deeper level.
There’s a scene in the film Adaptation that illustrates this concept to a T. Donald Kaufman is reminiscing with his brother Charlie, about his high school crush, Sarah Marsh. Donald was head over heels for her, but this feeling wasn’t reciprocated. In fact, Sarah actually despised him. Donald’s affection though was unflinching:
Donald Kaufman: I loved Sarah, Charles. It was mine, that love. I owned it. Even Sarah didn't have the right to take it away. I can love whoever I want.
Charlie Kaufman: But she thought you were pathetic.
Donald Kaufman: That was her business, not mine. You are what you love, not what loves you. That's what I decided a long time ago.
What Donald is describing is a “parasocial relationship”. In traditional, two-sided relationships, both people experience friendship and know where they stand with the other. But with parasocial relationships, it's all one-sided. And strictly speaking, from the standpoint of social cognition, Charles is right: “you are what you love, not what loves you”.
The Love and Radio episode, “Photochemical”, depicts a woman named Meags, who develops romantic relationships with photobooths. We’ll return to the concept of loving inanimate objects shortly. But in describing her experience with human relationships, she distills the idea of one-sided love perfectly,
“Though I can tell they’re feeling things back at me, I know that the feelings I have for them are the feelings I’m creating for myself anyway. Despite that there are two things that are making that relationship happen, I only will know my internal experience of that relationship. And so in that way, it's always sort of one-sided”.
The feelings about the relationship only occur in our own heads. In traditional relationships, there’s at least the expectation that these feelings are mutually held. With parasocial relationships though, this is not the case. It’s ALL in one person’s mind. The person may feel an incredibly real bond, even though the other person may not even know they exist at all.
How the Psychology of Loneliness Impacts Parasocial Relationships
Exactly why people develop these types of parasocial relationships is unclear. In at least some of the instances, however, loneliness appears to be a key variable. As Dr. Jaye Derrick, who studies parasocial relationships at The University of Houston told The Huffington Post, “People with low self-esteem might use their parasocial relationships to see themselves more positively, much like people with high self-esteem do with their ‘real’ social relationships. A parasocial relationship is safe. Your favorite celebrity cannot reach out of a magazine article to reject you. This has changed somewhat as social media has developed, but that’s still rare.”
Research indicates that the lonelier we feel, the more likely we are to have these kinds of parasocial relationships. It's almost as if, when deprived of human connection, the connection-seeking energy is turned inwards. We still get the interactivity and warmth we’re seeking, but instead of it playing out in the world, the relationship is a simulation within our own heads. As Professor Kurt Gray summarizes in his book, “The Mind Club”, “Loneliness makes people imagine a loving bond with other minds, and this love can make even imaginary minds real.”
Imagine someone in class, daydreaming about their celebrity crush. The external world - their professor babbling in class - quickly becomes faint, muffled, background noise. In their heads is where the action is. Here, for example, they’re on a date in a romantic restaurant. Maybe their simulation also includes details of the dinner conversation. Are they getting along, or are they in an argument? These internal relationships can become sophisticated, with their own back histories and dramas, just like in real life.
This may be why services like “rent-a-friend” may exist in the first place. We need to connect with other people, even if it means trying to do so under superficial circumstances. And even when, deep down, we may know that the person we’re interacting with isn’t our friend, we can still simulate that bond within our own heads.
All told, loneliness may drive us to connect with other people in a more “one-sided” way than we otherwise would. It’s social cognition turned up and turned inwards.
Photo by Atharva Tulsi on Unsplash
This is part 2 in a 3-part series on the psychology of the loneliness economy. Explore part 3 here
About the author
Matt Johnson, PhD is a researcher, writer, and consumer neuroscientist focusing on the application of psychology to branding. He is the author of the best-selling consumer psychology book Blindsight, and Branding That Means Business (Economist Books, Fall 2022). Contact Matt for speaking engagements, opportunities to collaborate, or just to say hello
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