Parasocial interaction (PSI) refers to a kind of psychological relationship experienced by an audience in their mediated encounters with performers in mass media. PSI is described as an illusory experience, such that media audiences interact with personas (e.g., talk show hosts, celebrities, fictional characters, social media influencers) as if they are engaged in a reciprocal relationship with them. The term was coined by Donald Horton and Richard Wohl in 1956. Parasocial interaction can happen through many kinds of media, including TV shows, podcasts, livestreams and social platforms where creators speak directly to viewers. The term first became widely used when researchers tried to explain why TV and radio personalities could feel familiar to audiences. Now it is used far beyond those formats. Social media and live-streaming make the feeling easier to sustain, since people get constant updates and a more casual tone. As a result, the connection can develop across time and influence how audiences react to public figures. Due to readily available media resources and the amount of time spent on media resources, children and teens are easily subjected to developing parasocial relationships at a young age. Studies involving longitudinal effects of parasocial interactions on children are still relatively new, according to developmental psychologist Sandra L. Calvert. A parasocial interaction can also be brought by repeated exposure to the media persona. Positive information learned about the media persona results in increased attraction due to trust and self-disclosure provided by the media persona, and the relationship progresses. Media users are loyal and feel directly connected to the persona, much as they are connected to their close friends, by observing and interpreting their appearance, gestures, voice, conversation, and conduct. Media personas have a significant amount of influence over media users, positive or negative, informing the way that they perceive certain topics or even their purchasing habits. While not universal to all parasocial interaction, a strong component of PSI are fantasies in which an individual develops ideas of romantic and sexual intimacy with a media persona despite not being in any reciprocal relationship with them. Such romantic and sexual fantasies with media personas can have varied effects, including both negative and positive.
Evolution of the term Parasocial interaction was first described from the perspective of media and communication studies. In 1956, Horton and Wohl explored the different interactions between mass media users and media figures and determined the existence of a parasocial relationship (PSR), where the user acts as though they are involved in a typical social relationship. However, parasocial interaction existed before mass media, when a person would establish a bond with political figures, gods or even spirits. Since then, the term has been adopted by psychologists in furthering their studies of the social relationships that emerge between consumers of mass media and the figures they see represented there. Horton and Wohl suggested that for most people, parasocial interactions with personae complement their current social interactions, while also suggesting that there are some individuals who exhibit extreme parasociality, or they substitute parasocial interactions for actual social interactions. Perse and Rubin (1989) contested this view, finding that parasocial interactions occurred as a natural byproduct of time spent with media figures. Although the concept originated from a psychological topic, extensive research of PSI has been performed in the area of mass communication with manifold results. Psychologists began to show their interest in the concept in the 1980s, and researchers began to develop the concept extensively within the field of communication science. Many important questions about social psychology were raised concerning the nature of these relationships that are problematic for existing theories in those fields. The concept of parasocial interaction and detailed examination of the behavioral phenomena that it seeks to explain have considerable potential for developing psychological theory. The conceptual development of parasocial interaction (PSI) and parasocial relationship (PSR) are interpreted and employed in different ways in various literatures. When it is applied in the use-and-gratifications (U&G) approaches, the two concepts are typically treated interchangeably, with regard primarily to a special type of "interpersonal involvement" with media figures that includes different phenomena such as interaction and identification. In contrast to the U&G approaches, research domains such as media psychology and semiotics argue for a clear distinction between the terms. PSI specifically means the "one-sided process of media person perception during media exposure", whereas PSR stands for "a cross-situational relationship that a viewer or user holds to a media person, which includes specific cognitive and affective components". Schmid & Klimmt (2011) further argue that PSI and PSR are progressive states such that what begins as a PSI has the potential to become a PSR. Dibble, Hartmann and Rosaen (2016) suggest that a PSR can develop without a PSI occurring, such as when the characters do not make a direct connection with the viewer. In sum, the terms, definitions, and models explicating PSI and PSR differ across scientific backgrounds and traditions. For example, Dibble et al. (2016) argued that PSI and PSR are often "conflated conceptually and methodologically". To test their assertion, they tested for parasocial indicators with two different scales used for parasocial inquiry: the traditional PSI-Scale and the newer EPSI-Scale, and compared results between the two. The traditional PSI-Scale, along with modified forms of it, is the most widely used measure of PSI assessment. However, Dibble et al. (2016) found evidence supporting their hypothesis that the newer EPSI-Scale was a better measure of PSIs and that the traditional scale merely revealed participants' liking of characters. Because of varying conceptions, it is difficult for researchers to reach a consensus.
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