While maintaining relationships with others is crucial for our health, not all relationships are equal. “Parasocial relationships” are the one-way bonds we form with famous people, imaginary characters, and people we follow on social media. It feels like these relationships are real, even though the other person doesn’t know about us. Dylan Wagner, a social neuroscientist at Ohio State University, studies these links to find out how they are like and different from connections in real life.
Wagner’s first study involved people who liked the TV show Game of Thrones. He found that different parts of the brain are active when people think about real friends versus fictitious characters. In particular, the middle prefrontal cortex is less active when people think about made-up people. For decades, social scientists have used fictional figures to study how people act, thinking that they could stand in for real people.
Wagner did find, though, that some people have strong emotional reactions to fictional characters, especially those who are really into the stories. For these people, thinking about their favorite characters makes their brains work in ways that are similar to how they react to real people. This shows that the lines between fiction and reality become less clear when we are deeply involved with a story.
Wagner’s study also looks at the idea of “social facilitation.” The idea that thinking about someone improves performance. It’s intriguing that this effect doesn’t just happen with real friends; it also happens with fictional people we care about. This makes me think that our brains might treat these figures like real people.
Parasocial relationships can even change how we act. Social media influencers, who are real people, interact with us in ways that are similar to these one-sided connections. This can affect our lives in real ways, like making us more open to their messages or making us sad when our favorite TV show stops.
Wagner’s study showed an intriguing thing: people who are lonely often mix up real and imagined relationships in their minds. This could be because they use fake characters to feel like they belong, which makes the characters seem more “real” to them. On the other hand, as more of our interactions happen online, real people may become less real to us, similar to how we think about fictional figures.
As we continue to live in a world where real and virtual interactions coexist, learning about these parasocial connections can help us understand how we connect with people in real life and in our minds.