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The Neural Correlates of Parasocial Relationships

Broom, Timothy W.

Abstract Details

2018, Master of Arts, Ohio State University, Psychology.
Many people have a tendency to form deep attachments to fictional characters, viewing them much as they would an actual friend, a phenomenon known as a parasocial relationship. The current study investigated the neural correlates of parasocial relationships using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). While undergoing fMRI, subjects made trait judgments about themselves, a set of self-selected personally familiar others, and a set of familiar fictional characters that remained the same for all subjects. The main findings included that activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vMPFC), a region implicated in self-referential processing, was greatest in response to judgments about the self, followed by real others, followed by fictional others. The magnitude of the difference between responses to the self and fictional others was negatively correlated with an individual difference measure capturing a tendency to become absorbed in the thoughts and feelings of fictional characters, suggesting that, to the extent that this region responds to the personal significance of others, fictional characters are seen as more personally significant by those high in this tendency. The main hypothesis, however, that ratings of interpersonal closeness would modulate activity within this region for both real and fictional others, was not supported. Ratings of familiarity were positively associated with activity for real others within the vMPFC, but these ratings were not uniquely predictive when controlling for ratings of closeness, similarity, and liking. Investigations of fine-grained neural activity patterns using multivariate methods suggested that ratings of familiarity, closeness, similarity, and liking together predicted the neural representational similarity structure for the identities of others, which is consistent with recent work demonstrating that person-perception models can capture the neural structure underlying representations of personally familiar others and well-known i public figures. Lastly, between-subject similarity in the neural representational structure of fictional characters was examined along with between-subject similarity in subjective ratings of the characters. Results of this analysis indicated that higher similarity in ratings of closeness toward the target fictional characters was associated with lower similarity in the neural representational structure of these fictional characters. This finding might suggest that people spend more time thinking about their favorite characters and thus form particularly personalized mental representations of these characters relative to less favored characters, which in turn leads to these representations being less similar to others who share the same favorite characters.
Dylan Wagner (Advisor)
Lisa Libby (Committee Member)
Kentaro Fujita (Committee Member)
91 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Broom, T. W. (2018). The Neural Correlates of Parasocial Relationships [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1531764814960927

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Broom, Timothy. The Neural Correlates of Parasocial Relationships. 2018. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1531764814960927.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Broom, Timothy. "The Neural Correlates of Parasocial Relationships." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1531764814960927

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)