Loneliness, Parasocial Interaction, and Local Television News Viewing

Abstract

A conceptual model was developed predicting parasocial interaction from both a social interaction need due to loneliness and instrumental television news use. Questionnaires were completed by 329 persons. Pearson and partial correlations supported hypotheses linking loneliness with less interpersonal communication and both loneliness and parasocial interaction with more television reliance. Loneliness and parasocial interaction were not correlated. Canonical correlation analysis supported expectations that instrumental news viewing f o r information was related to more parasocial interaction and perceived news realism; viewing news for exciting entertainment, news affinity, and news viewing levels correlated positively with this pattern. Ritualized news viewing f o r time consumption was related to more television viewing, but to less news viewing, duration, and affinity. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis identifed news affinity> perceived news realism, and information news viewing motives as salient predictors of parasocial interaction with a favorite local television news personality. Implications of results were discussed in light of uses and gratifications research and communication interaction. Parasocial interaction has received widespread speculation but limited empirical investigation since its introduction 30 years ago. The concept was first explained by Horton and Wohl (1956) as a relationship on the part of the television viewer of friendship or intimacy with aAlan M. Rubin (Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1976) is associate professor, Elizabeth M. Perse (M.A., Kent State University, 1985) is a doctoral student, and Robert A . Powell(M.A., Kent State University, 1985) is instructor in the School of Speech Communication at Kent State University. We are grateful to Michael McHughfor assisting with development of the parasocial items and data collection, and Carole Barbato for arranging for data collection. @ 1985 International Communication Assn.

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