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Role of Experience of Parasocial Interaction, Parasocial Interaction and Parasocial Breakup in Prediction of Celebrity Worship

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Department of psychology, Faculty of psychology and educational sciences, Tehran university, Tehran, Iran

2 Professor in Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

3 Faculty of Literature and humanity sciences, University of Guilan, Rasht, Iran.

4 Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Introduction: By expanding the culture of celebrities, experts talk about strong desire to celebrities and their related issues;in this regard, parasocialbonds can play important roles in worshippingcelebrities. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate the role of parasocial interactionexperience, parasocial interaction, and par asocial breakdown in predicting theworship ofcelebrities.Method: The research design was descriptive and correlational. The statistical population of the study consisted of students of the faculty of literature and humanity sciences of the University of Guilan in 2018. In this study, 240 female and male students were selected throughconvenience sampling method. For collecting data, Celebrity Worship Attitude Scale (McCutcheon et al., 2002), Parasocial Interaction  Experience scale (Hartmann &Goldhoorn, 2011), parasocial interaction scale (Rubin et al., 1985) and parasocial breakup scale(Cohen, 2003) were used. Then, data were analyzed throughPearson correlation formula and multiple regression method. Results: The results indicated that the parasocial interaction and parasocial breakup could significantly predict the worship ofcelebrities, whileparasocial interaction experience was not able to predict theworshipof celebrities. Conclusion: According to the results, the parasocial interaction and parasocial breakup play important roles in fascination tofavorite celebrities and worshiping them. Therefore, interventions to reduce extreme parasocial interactions, as well as the reduction of aversive behaviors and emotions after the parasocial breakup, can lead to the reduction in worshipping celebrities and consequently reducing its problems.

Keywords

References
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Social Cognition
Volume 8, Issue 2 - Serial Number 16
November 2019
Pages 50-60
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