ABSTRACT

Forming ties with media consumers and investing effort in knowing what they do and what happens to them is a common reason many people use media. The one-sided nature of these parasocial experiences, however, suggests that consumers may be using them, in part, based on egocentric motivations. In this study, a model of egocentric motivations for engagement in parasocial relationships is offered as a means of enhancing the scholarly understanding of who is most likely to form the strongest mediated ties and experience the various benefits and consequences therein. Additionally, a concept from interpersonal relationship literature (i.e., interpersonal perception) is developed within a parasocial relationship framework as a means of drawing additional parallels between parasocial and interpersonal relationships. This new concept (i.e., parasocial perception) serves to add nuance to how parasocial relationships are understood to form, and be experienced by consumers. Study findings reveal support for our model of egocentric parasocial motivations and demonstrate the emerging viability of the interpersonal perception concept in a mediated context. These data are discussed in terms of their scholarly and practical implications.

摘要

与媒体消费者建立联系并投入精力了解他们在做什么以及他们会发生什么是许多人使用媒体的常见原因。然而，这些准社会体验的片面性质表明，消费者可能在一定程度上基于以自我为中心的动机来使用它们。在这项研究中，提供了一种参与准社会关系的以自我为中心的动机模型，作为增强学术理解的一种手段，即谁最有可能形成最强的中介关系并体验其中的各种好处和后果。此外，人际关系文献中的一个概念（即人际感知）是在准社会关系框架内发展起来的，作为在准社会关系和人际关系之间绘制额外相似之处的一种手段。这个新概念（即 准社会感知）有助于增加对准社会关系如何被理解形成和消费者体验的细微差别。研究结果揭示了对我们以自我为中心的准社会动机模型的支持，并证明了人际感知概念在中介背景下的新兴可行性。这些数据将根据其学术和实践意义进行讨论。