parasocial relations and romantic attraction: gender and dating status differences

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Parasocial relations andromantic attraction: Genderand dating status differencesJonathan Cohen aa Lecturer in the Department of Communication ,University of HaifaPublished online: 18 May 2009.

To cite this article: Jonathan Cohen (1997) Parasocial relations and romanticattraction: Gender and dating status differences, Journal of Broadcasting &Electronic Media, 41:4, 516-529, DOI: 10.1080/08838159709364424

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Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic /Media/Fall 1997

Parasocial Relations and RomanticAttraction: Gender and Dating Status

Differences

Jonathan Cohen

The present study explores the links between individual TV viewers' work-ing models of attachment (Bowlby, 1980) and the parasocial relations theyestablish with their favorite TV character. Student subjects answered a sur-vey that assessed the intensity of their parasocial relationships and the con-tent of their mental models of attachment. Results show a selective patternof relationships between attachment models and parasocial relationships.For dating subjects, males were found to have stronger parasocial relation-ships with their favorite characters as they were more anxious about theircurrent partner. Females, on the other hand, were found to have strongerparasocial relationships as they were more secure in their current. Findingsare discussed in terms of gender differences in romantic relationships.

While watching TV, viewers experience feelings and use heuristics developed fromtheir real life experiences (Rubin & Rubin, 1985; Reeves & Nass, 1996). Therefore,their responses to TV content vary as does people's behavior in real social interaction(Livingstone, 1996). Key elements of the television experience are the symbolic rela-tionships we develop with TV characters (Hoffner & Cantor, 1991). The present studyis an initial attempt to extend the inquiry into symbolic relationships with TV char-acters, and to explore how they resemble and affect people's social relationships.

One of the ways people integrate media into their social lives is by establishingsymbolic, or parasocial, relationships (PSR) with media characters (Horton & Wohl1956; Caughey, 1984). Studies have found that PSR are in many ways similar to socialrelationships (Rubin & McHugh, 1987). Much research has advanced our under-standing of why and how these relationships develop, but there are mixed resultsregarding the ways in which PSR relate to social relationships. Although PSR wereoriginally conceptualized as compensation for lack of social interaction (Horton &

Jonathan Cohen (Ph.D., Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California, 1995) isa lecturer in the Department of Communication at the University of Haifa. His research interests include tele-vision reception studies, and community media in Israel. This study is based on the author's doctoral dis-sertation. The author wishes to thank Sheila T. Murphy and Lynn Miller of the Annenberg School forCommunication, University of Southern California, and Steve Read of the Psychology department at USC.This manuscript has benefited greatly from the advice of Faith Gleicher, and several anonymous reviewers.This manuscript was accepted for publication in June 1997.

© 1997 Broadcast Education Association Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 41, 1997 pp. 516-529

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Cohen/PARASOCIAL RELATIONS AND ROMANTIC ATTRACTION 517

Wohl, 1956), Rubin, Perse and Powell (1985) did not find a link between lonelinessand PSR. This discrepancy suggests that PSR may be understood and experienced dif-ferently by different people. In the current study individual differences in how PSR areperceived by viewers are proposed. These differences are explained as resulting fromdifferences in the content and accessibility of thoughts and feelings about real-lifeattachment figures, as well as the gender and life position of viewers. It is suggestedthat while some viewers may experience PSR as symbolic attachments, others mayexperience PSR as distinct from their social relationships.

The way people understand, feel, and respond to their romantic partners is influ-enced by their childhood relationships with their primary caregivers (Bowlby, 1969,1973, 1988; Hazan & Shaver, 1987). The psychological mechanisms that link earlyexperiences with adult feelings, thoughts, and behaviors in relationships comprisean individual's "working model" of attachment. Working models are "cognitive rep-resentations of self and others that evolve out of experiences with attachment figuresand are concerned with the regulation and fulfillment of attachment needs" (Hazan,Collins, & Clark, 1996, p. 39). The attachment needs of adults consist of a need forintimacy, a secure base and caregiving (Bowlby, 1988), and attachment relationshipsare those relationships in which we seek to satisfy such needs.

The content of individuals' working models of attachment affects their behavior inattachment relationships. Following developmental research with infants and children(Ainsworth, Belhar, Waters, & Wall, 1978), attachment researchers have identifiedthree types of attachment styles among adults (Hazan & Shaver, 1987). The securestyle is based on positive beliefs about the self and others. People with a secure attach-ment style are confident and trusting in their relationships with others, and their rela-tionships are characterized by stability, love, security and trust. The avoidant style isbased on negative beliefs regarding the outcomes of close relationships. People withan avoidant attachment style tend to avoid romantic involvement, and they prefer tospend time alone. Finally, the anxious attachment style is based on an overriding anx-iety about separation and abandonment, and on a preoccupation with being loved byothers. People with an anxious attachment style desire extremely intense relationshipsand develop a 'clingy' relationship orientation (Hazan & Shaver, 1987).

Working models of attachment, then, are conceptually similar to schemas (Bald-win, Fehr, Keedian, Seidel, & Thompson, 1993), but differ from them in the follow-ing ways: they are more heavily affect-laden, more general, and have a role in plan-ning future actions (Hazan, Collins, & Clark, 1996). First developed and shaped ininfancy, working models of attachment evolve throughout life and become increas-ingly complex. They consist of three main dimensions: expectations about the abil-ity to depend on one's partner in times of need, anxiety felt about being deserted byone's partner, and comfort with intimacy (Collins & Read, 1990).

People with different attachment styles have been shown to differ in the way theythink about themselves and their relationships (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991),how they interpret and respond to their partner's behaviors (Collins, 1994), how long

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518 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/Fall 1997

their relationships tend to last, and how satisfied they are in their relationships(Feeney, Noller, & Callan, 1994). Attachment styles also affect people's attitudestoward their work and the way they use work situations to complement or compen-sate for their close relationships (Hazan & Shaver, 1990). While secure adults tend toenjoy their work more and are able to separate their professional and personal lives,avoidants tend to use work as a way to avoid social ties, and anxiously attachedadults tend to use work situations as a way to compensate for problems in their rela-tionships (Hazan & Shaver, 1990).

Recently, the attachment perspective has been extended to show that the rela-tionship of the members of fan clubs of stars like Michael Jackson (Steever, 1994), orthe felt attachment of religious people with God (Kirpatrick, 1994) are influenced bytheir attachment models. These studies provide preliminary evidence that peoplemay use their working models of attachment to think about symbolic relationships.In the present research the notion of symbolic attachment is used as the basis forhypothesizing about the relationship between viewers' working models of attach-ment and their PSR.

Parasocial Relationships (PSR)

As originally developed by Horton and Wohl in 1956, parasocial relationships are"one-sided interpersonal relationships that television viewers establish with mediacharacters" (Rubin & McHugh, 1987, p. 280.) PSR develop through ongoing inter-action between media personae and audience members. From the viewers perspec-tive, PSR increase liking of, and loyalty to, the program, and are positively associat-ed with greater viewing intention, attention, perceived realism, and affinity for TV(Rubin & Perse,1987).

Several studies suggest that likening PSR to social relationships is more than a use-ful metaphor. Perse and Rubin (1989) found that length of acquaintance was posi-tively related to strength of relationship in both social and parasocial relationships.Cortez (1992) found that, as in interpersonal relationships, the choice of newscast-ers with whom viewers formed PSR was predicted by physical and social attraction,shared values, attitudes, background and similarity in communicative style. Thus,parasocial attraction follows many of the patterns identified in interpersonal attrac-tion (Cialdini, 1993).

Moreover, people may use PSR to substitute for lack of social interaction in reallife and to prevent themselves from feeling lonely. For example, Yanof (1991) foundthat compared with light and non-viewers, women who were heavy TV viewersreported stronger parasocial relations but less involvement with their interpersonalrelationships. Interestingly, these heavy viewers did not report less satisfaction withtheir social lives than did light or non-viewers. Thus, it seems that parasocial rela-tions may substitute for diminished interpersonal contact. More generally, in review-ing research on motivations for TV viewing, Rubin (1985) argued that, like interper-sonal interaction, TV is often viewed as a way to battle loneliness.

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Though TV viewing, and PSR specifically, are often seen as substituting for inter-personal relationships, Rubin, Perse, and Powell (1985) found no correlationbetween loneliness and the intensity of viewers' PSR. The conflicting findings regard-ing the use of PSR to alleviate loneliness suggest that PSR may function to broadenthe scope of interpersonal relations rather than to compensate for lack of relation-ships. Another possibility is that there are important situational and individual differ-ences in how people perceive characters and why they develop PSR. Additionally,whereas there is evidence of similarities between PSR and interpersonal relationships,it is unclear whether PSR are similar specifically to attachment relationships or per-haps to friendships, casual acquaintances, or other types of interpersonal relations.

To specify the exact nature of PSR is difficult. Steever (1994) found that some ofthe members of Michael Jackson's fan club developed very intense PSR that resem-bled romantic attachments. Analyzing fan mail, she found that many of the fans usedterms that indicate attachment relations. However, it is unlikely that such intensefandom is the norm, so it is unreasonable to assume that all people think of PSR asattachment relationships. An attachment perspective may help explain some PSR,but it may be irrelevant to the PSR experienced by others.

PSR and Attachment

One of the lessons learned from audience research is never to underestimate thediversity of media audience reactions (e.g., Liebes & Katz, 1990; Livingstone, 1996).PSR are probably no exception to this rule, and thus may be perceived differently bypeople in various situations. For some viewers PSR may be experienced as intimateand serve attachment needs, and for others they may be experienced as friendship(Yanof, 1991), idolization (Steever, 1994) or any other form of relationship. In sum,it is plausible to expect that some viewers may apply working models of attachmentto PSR and that others may not.

Who, then, is likely to apply working models of attachment to understanding andresponding to PSR? In many social situations accessibility has been found to beimportant in predicting which cognitive structures people will apply (e.g., Fiske &Taylor, 1984; Devine, 1989; Higgins & King, 1981). This suggests that when engag-ing in PSR, people whose attachment models are more active and accessible aremore likely to apply their attachment models to their reactions and feelings.

Because the most salient attachment figures for young adults are their romanticpartners (Hazan & Zeifner, 1994), working models of attachments are more likely tobe accessible to adults who are involved in romantic relationships than to those whoare not. Thus, while relating to TV characters, dating young adults should be morelikely than non-dating young adults to activate their attachment models. Therefore,a greater correspondence is expected between the content of dating adults' workingmodels (attachment anxiety, security, and feelings about intimacy), and the intensi-ty of their PSR.

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520 journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/Fall 1997

Hr. The correlations between the dimensions of a subject's attachment models andthe intensity of their PSR will be stronger for dating subjects than for singlesubjects.

While expecting a stronger correlation between attachment and PSR for datingsubjects than for single subjects, the direction of such associations remains unclear.One possibility is that viewers develop PSR as a way to compensate for problems intheir relationships, because PSR are safe and stable (Cohen & Metzger, 1995). In thiscase, PSR would be more intense the more anxious a subject is. Another possibilityis that viewers will use PSR simply to complement existing attachment relationships,and PSR will be more intense the more secure a subject is about his or her attach-ment. Why certain viewers use PSR to complement, and others to compensate, forinterpersonal relationships may reflect differences in how different viewers think ofinterpersonal relationships.

Gender Differences

The literature on personal relationships has documented the different ways inwhich men and women experience relationships. Men, unlike women, have beenfound to think of their friendships more as goal-oriented than expressive (Fox, Gibbs,& Auerbach, 1983). Reviewing gender differences in close relationships, Acitelli andYoung (1996) conclude that men report relationship anxiety more than women, andthat women monitor and evaluate their relationships more than men, and think aboutrelationships in a more complex fashion than men (Acitelli & Young, 1996). Men tendto think about close relationships mainly when problems arise, whereas women tendto think about their relationships more spontaneously than men (Burnett, 1987).

Wood (1986) argues that in the romantic relationship domain, men and womenthink about crises in their relationships differently. Whereas women tend to focus onthemselves and talk about problems in relational levels and self-identity, men lookoutside themselves and tend to define the problem in terms of flaws in their partnerand external circumstances. It is logical, then, that men who are anxious about thestate of their romantic relationships may turn to PSR for support, whereas insecurewomen will focus their energy on fixing their romantic relationship rather thandepending on PSR.

Whereas men use PSR to deal with attachment anxiety, women may use PSR toseek additional social interaction when relationships are going well. It has been sug-gested that men often rely only on their partners for emotional support, whereaswomen maintain other support networks such as family and friends (Helgeson,1994). Thus men, who may have less social support than women, are more likely toturn to TV for comfort when they are anxious about the future of their relationships.Women, on the other hand, may depend more on family and friends. This suggeststhat as women are more secure about their relationships they may be more likelythan men to develop PSR as additional outlets for relational expression.

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Thus, the literature regarding gender differences in relationships suggests thatwomen maintain a larger social network than men. Men tend to rely on a singlesource for intimacy and emotional support, and turn outward only when anxious.Although these differences were found in the context of personal relationships, theyprovide a basis for hypotheses regarding differences in views toward symbolic rela-tionships as well. Women, then, would be expected to seek PSR as a way to com-plement their existing relationships. As women feel more secure about their realrelationships, they would be more likely to invest in PSR.

H2: Among dating men, attachment anxiety will be positively associated with theintensity of PSR.

HJ: Among dating women, attachment security (depending on one's partner andcomfort with intimacy) will be positively associated with intensity of PSR.

Method

Participants

209 graduate and undergraduate students from two college campuses in the LosAngeles area completed questionnaires as part of a larger study between March andMay 1995. Because this study used a correctional design in a pilot study attemptingto explore the use of attachment theory to TV reception, the use of a student sampleseemed appropriate. Because both the dependent and independent variables mea-sured psychological processes within the same individual, the sampling procedureswere somewhat less crucial than they are in normative research. Nonetheless, theresults of this study should be seen as preliminary.

While not randomly selected, the sample was quite diverse: ethnically 46 4% ofthe sample was Caucasian, 30.1% was Asian, 13.4% was Hispanic, 2.9% wasAfrican-American. 3.8% of the sample reported identifying as part of other ethnicgroups and 3.3% did not report their ethnic background. The sample consisted of120 males and 88 females, who ranged in age from 17 to 48 (m = 20.7 years, SD =4.5 years). 81 subjects were dating at the time of the study, 119 were not dating, and9 did not report their relationship status.

Procedure

Subjects were recruited from a variety of classes in departments including Math,Physics and Economics, as well from as graduate and undergraduate Communica-tion courses. Following initial contact with the author, instructors agreed to allowclass time for the completion of questionnaire. Classes ranged in size, but none hadless than a dozen subjects. Thus, all questionnaires were completed in large groups.In one class where class time was unavailable, a small extra credit was offered forcompleting the questionnaire in smaller groups (4-10 subjects each) outside classtime. Completion times ranged from 20-40 minutes.

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Subjects completed a questionnaire entitled "The media and you". They wereassured of the anonymity of their responses, and were told that their participationwas strictly voluntary. Once the survey was completed, all subjects were fullydebriefed about the goals of the research and allowed to ask questions.

Measurement

Demographic questions.1 Subjects were first asked a series of demographic ques-tions including age, gender, ethnicity and year in school. The questionnaire alsoincluded questions regarding relationship status. Subjects were asked whether theywere currently in a relationship, and if not, if they had ever been involved in a rela-tionship. Several questions assessing satisfaction with, and duration of, both presentor past relationships were also included. In the case of past relationships subjectswere asked when their last one ended, and how long their past relationships lasted.

Attachment styles. Individual differences in attachment were measured using theCollins and Read (1990) adult Attachment Scale (AAS) as modified by Collins (1994).The AAS consists of statements regarding one's beliefs and feelings about romanticattachments. It includes 18 statements that measure the three dimensions that under-lie Working models of attachment:2 Close, Depend and Anxiety.

As described by Collins (1994), the Close dimension represents "...the extent towhich a person is comfortable with closeness and intimacy." The Depend subscalemeasures "...the extent to which a person is comfortable depending on others andbelieves that people can be relied upon when needed." The Anxiety subscale mea-sures "...the extent to which a person is worried about being rejected and aban-doned by others" (pp. 13-14). Subjects were asked to respond to all statements interms of close relationships. Responses ranged from 1 (not at all characteristic of me)to 5 (very characteristic of me).

Like other schemas, working models do not fundamentally change over short peri-ods of time, although they do develop and are somewhat affected by temporaryevents. Collins and Read (1990) found test re-test reliabilities of .68, .71, and .52 forClose, Depend, and Anxiety, respectively, over a 2-month period.

Parasocial Relations. To assess the intensity of the parasocial relations viewersdeveloped with characters, each subject was asked to write the name of his or herfavorite TV character and the name of the show in which this character appears.Subjects were then asked to respond to the short version of the ParaSocialInteraction scale developed by Rubin, Perse, and Powell (1985). These statementswere taken from the original twenty items as described by Rubin and Perse (1987).The scale includes ten statements to which subjects respond on a five-point scaleranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Items described behaviorsand feelings toward a TV persona, such as "My favorite character makes me feelcomfortable, as if I am with friends."

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Results3

Measurement

Relationship status. The 81 subjects who were in relationships were generally sat-isfied with their relationships (m = 5.788 on a 7-point scale, SD = 1.313) and report-ed spending a mean of 24.86 hours a week with their partner (SD = 29.94). Themedian length of current relationships was 16 months.

Attachment. The Adult Attachment Scale (AAS) provides a score for each subjecton each of the three attachment dimensions, Close, Depend, and Anxiety. Scoresrange from 6 to 30, where higher scores signify higher comfort with intimacy (Close),greater ability to depend on others (Depend), and higher anxiety about abandon-ment (Anxiety). The subscales that measure each of the attachment dimensionsproved reliable. Cronbach's alphas for the three subscales were .76, .73, and .86, forClose, Depend, and Anxiety, respectively. These reliabilities are similar to thosefound by Collins (1994), and the mean scores on the different subscales were simi-lar to those reported by Collins and Read (1990). Scores on all three subscales werenormally distributed, with means of 2.69 (SD = .968), 3.04 {SD = .774), and 3.50(SD = .760) for Anxiety, Close, and Depend respectively. As expected, the Close andDepend subscales were positively correlated (r = .47). The Anxiety subscale corre-lated negatively with both the Close (r = -.40) and Depend (r = -.39) subscales. Nosex differences were found on any of the attachment dimensions, nor was being ina current relationship related to any of the subscales.

PSR. Because this study focuses on individual audience differences, the depen-dent measure was designed to assess differences among viewers in their propensi-ty to attach to characters, rather than differences in liking of specific characters.Therefore subjects were asked to identify the name of their favorite character and theshow he or she appeared on. Responses about favorite characters were coded todetermine the sex of each character and whether the subject was of the same oropposite sex. Choices were also coded according to type of character (real, fiction-al, or animated) and type of show (reality-based, comedy, drama). After identifyingtheir favorite TV character, subjects were asked to respond to the items on the PSRscale in respect to this character.

Some subjects did not have a TV character they saw as their favorite and there-fore did not respond to the scale. Overall, 168 subjects responded to the ParaSocialInteraction Scale. Scores on the ten-item Parasocial Interaction Scale had a possiblerange of 10 to 70. In the data from the current sample PSR ranged from 12 to 50 witha mean of 31 and a standard deviation of 7.96. The scale was found to be internal-ly consistent (a = .82).

Women (M = 33.53) had significantly stronger PSR with their favorite charactersthan men (M = 29.18; f (167) = 3.63, p < .001). Daters and non-daters were not sig-nificantly different in the intensity of their PSR.

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Favorite character choices. No instructions or limitations were specified as to thecharacter choices subjects were to make. Nonetheless, close to 90% of subjectschose fictional characters, 7% chose animated characters and the rest chose real TVpersonae. 71% chose male characters as their favorite. Women were more likely tochoose a favorite male character (74% of women) than men were to choose favoritefemale character (27% of men). No other gender differences were found in choicesof characters. 68% chose characters from comedy series, 31% from drama series,and the rest chose characters from news or reality shows. Dating subjects were morelikely to choose opposite sex favorite characters than same sex characters (41 oppo-site sex vs. 26 same sex), while the reverse was true for non-daters (35 opposite sexvs. 54 same sex) (Phi = -.21657, p < .01). No other dating status differences werefound in character choices. Choice of same-sex or different-sex favorite characterswas not related to any of the components of working models of attachment, nor wasit related to the intensity of PSR. No differences in any of the 3 attachment dimen-sions or the intensity of PSR were found among subjects choosing real, fictional, oranimated characters or among subjects choosing male and female characters. Thus,it seems that the type of character chosen had little effect on the association betweenattachment and the intensity of PSR. Rather, it seems that individual differencesamong viewers account for these associations.

Analysis

The first hypothesis predicted that the correlations between attachment dimensionsand levels of PSR would be greater for dating than non-dating subjects. By dividingthe sample into two groups based on their dating status, comparisons of the relation-ships between attachment and PSR for each of the groups separately were made. Thiscomparison revealed that for non-dating subjects, none of the attachment dimensionswere significantly related to PSR. Among dating subjects the Depend factor of attach-ment correlated significantly with PSR (r= .27, p< .05), as predicted, attachment anx-iety was positively related to PSR but this association was not significant (r = .18, ns)and comfort with intimacy was not related to PSR (r= .02, ns).

The second hypothesis predicted that the PSR of dating women would be posi-tively related to attachment security. This was based on the assumption that womenin secure relationships would be more likely to broaden their relationship networksby engaging in imaginary relationships. PSR for women, therefore, was expected toplay a complementary rather than a compensatory role.

This hypothesis was supported. Female subjects' ability to depend on their partnerwas substantially related to PSR (n = 36, r = .50, p < .05). Comfort with intimacy,another measure of attachment security, was also marginally related to PSR (n = 36,r= .28, p < .10). As expected, attachment anxiety was not associated with PSR forwomen (n = 36, r= -.05, ns).

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The third hypothesis was that men's PSR would be associated with attachmentanxiety but not attachment security. Men, it was argued, would be more likely toturn to PSR for relational compensation when they were anxious about their real-liferelationships. This prediction was confirmed by findings that among male datersattachment anxiety was positively correlated with PSR (n = 33, r= .41, p <.O5). Theability to depend on one's partner was not related to PSR (n = 33, r = .09, ns) norwas one's comfort with intimacy {n = 33, r = -.22, ns).

In sum, our results show that the use of working models of attachment in PSR waslimited to dating subjects, and that their use differed by gender. Women seem to per-ceive PSR as a way to expand their relational network, and indeed, their attachmentsecurity was positively related to the intensity of their PSR. Men, on the other hand,turned to PSR more as they were anxious about the future of their social relationships,and so the intensity of their PSR was positively related to their attachment anxiety.

Discussion

This study set out to explore the way TV viewers understand their symbolic rela-tionships with favorite TV characters. It was hypothesized that viewers would applytheir thoughts and feelings about close relationship to TV personae. By applyingAttachment Theory and the concept of working models, differences in how PSRwere experienced by different groups defined by their life position and gender werepredicted. It was found that working models of attachment were more likely to beactivated by dating than non-dating subjects in PSR. Moreover, gender differences inhow subjects thought about PSR were consistent with previous research on genderdifferences in interpersonal relationships.

The finding that women had overall stronger PSR was not surprising, (Bailey,Hendrick, & Hendrick, 1987). However, given the robust nature of findings regardinggender differences in relationships, the scant attention paid to gender in the study ofPSR is surprising. This study suggests that the gender differences in PSR are parallelto those in social relationships. Moreover, while the results of this study do not beardirectly on how people think of TV viewing as a whole, how they use TV, and whatit means in their lives, there is reason to believe that gender differences exist in thegeneral meaning TV takes on in people's lives. From this and other studies, it seemsthat women experience TV viewing as a more relational activity than men, whereasmen are more task-oriented in their understanding and use of TV than are women.

That TV viewing is a more relational experience for women is also supported bytheir favor for drama and other fiction depicting relationships. On the other hand,the task-oriented nature of TV viewing for men is evident in their favor for non-fic-tional shows (e.g., Morley, 1986). The higher intensity of PSR developed by womenthan by men in this study also supports the suggested pattern of gender differencesin understanding of TV viewing. Finally, the use of PSR by women in an attempt tocomplement secure attachments, and by men to deal with fears of being abandoned,

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also suggests that men turn to TV to solve problems whereas women see TV as afriend or companion.

Previous studies have argued that the connection between interpersonal and masscommunication is mainly through motivational factors (Cohen & Metzger, 1995;Rubin & Rubin, 1985), but the present study supports a notion of a socio-cognitivesimilarity between interpersonal and symbolic relationships (Hoijer, 1992; Reeves &Nass, 1996). Finally, this study identifies some specific factors (i.e., attachmentschema, gender and dating status) that exert influence whether interpersonal andsymbolic experience complement each other or compensate for one another.

The nature of symbolic relationships with TV characters varies, it seems, as doother aspects of audience reactions to, and interpretations of, televised texts. Just asviewers' experiences reflect their cultural background (Liebes & Katz, 1990), psycho-logical needs (Conway & Rubin, 1991), and life position (Rubin, 1985), the way theyrelate to characters reflects their attachment needs and working models. This is con-sistent with evidence that mediated interactions, more generally, follow patterns ofinterpersonal interactions rather than a schema all their own (Reeves & Nass, 1996).

That reception differences follow both cultural and personal factors has been partof the canon of media scholarship for some time (Hoijer, 1992), but as Livingstone(1996) has noted, there is a need to specify differences in reception. As inLivingstone's work (Livingstone, 1991), this study demonstrates that by using con-cepts from social cognition research, as well as from other areas of social-psycho-logical inquiry, it is possible to make advances in understanding how people expe-rience TV. A final implication of this work is the extension of Attachment Theory intomedia studies. The ability to use Attachment Theory in analyzing audience psy-chology is further evidence of the theory's usefulness.

Limitations and Future Research

Due to certain limitations, the results of this study must be qualified and shouldbe viewed as preliminary evidence. First, the use of a student sample requires thatthis study be replicated before any generalizations can be made. Student popula-tions are often unstable in terms of both their relational schemata and their mediaconsumption patterns. While it was felt that for an initial exploration of the role ofattachment working models in imaginary relationships a student sample was ade-quate, it is important that the use of attachment models in developing PSR be testedin other populations as well. Indeed, it is quite reasonable to surmise that strongerand more consistent results may be identified in adult populations who have struc-tured TV viewing habits as well as more stable working models of attachment.Nonetheless, the use of a student sample has the advantage of examining a group ofsubjects for whom interpersonal relations, both symbolic and social, are importantand salient. Moreover, as compared with older adults, college students are morelikely to look to symbolic relationships as models of adult relationships.

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Second, although schema availability can explain why working models apply toPSR only for daters, we are still unsure what PSR represents for non-daters. Futureresearch should attempt to identify theories of friendship or role-modeling that mayshed light on this issue. Also, we know that PSR commonly develop with newscast-ers (Rubin, Perse, & Powell, 1985), talk-show hosts (Horton & Wohl, 1956), andsalespeople on home-shopping networks (Auter & Moore, 1993). However, becauseof the predominance of fictional characters chosen by subjects in this study, the cur-rent data tell us little about the ways people experience PSR with other types of TVperformers. Our analyses suggest that there are no systematic differences in whochooses fictional and non-fictional performers as favorites, but future researchshould examine more closely any possible differences in the ways PSR with differ-ent types of performers are experienced.

This study's main contribution is in introducing Attachment Theory to the study ofPSR. By doing so, a conceptual framework in which symbolic and social relationshipsmay be studied and compared with each other is offered. Additionally, this study goesbeyond 'effects' research by examining the dynamics of audience reactions to mediacharacters. It is hoped that this study will further the integration of research on inter-personal communication and mass media. Such an integration may help point outcommon interests of scholars in different specialties of our discipline and help iden-tify larger overarching questions regarding human communication and relationships.

Notes

1 The data for the present analysis were taken from a data set collected for an earlier study (Cohen, 1995).The original data set included many sections not reported here, measuring motivations for TV viewing, contentpreferences, media dependencies and other variables. Only items relevant to the present study are reported.

2 Operationally, measuring dimensions allows us to work with continuous variables rather than categori-cal styles. Theoretically, it is unlikely that all individuals with anxious attachment styles are equally anxious,or that all secure people are equally secure (Collins & Read, 1994). Thus, an increase in analytical powerresults from using dimensions rather than styles.

3 Because the statistics reported in this study were derived from a non-random sample, all probability esti-mates should be regarded not as measures of generalizability but as an indication of effect sizes relative tothe sample size in each test.

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parasocial relations and romantic attraction: gender and dating status differences

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