1.1 Relationships with fictional characters
Like the course authors, you may well have cherished relationships with the fictional characters you have read about, particularly maybe in those stories you have returned to several times. Psychologists, and researchers from other academic disciplines such as sociology and communication studies, refer to these relationships with fictional characters as being ‘para-social’ – where ‘para’ has its usual meaning as a prefix, namely ‘resembling’ or ‘beyond’.
Although the exact definition can vary, para-social relationships tend to be seen as those that are formed between a person and someone that they do not know personally. Thus, it is possible to have a para-social relationship with a character in a book, an actor on stage, an influencer on social media or indeed a famous person that you read about in a magazine. This means that it is possible to form a para-social relationship both with a fictional character and also with an actual person (as long as you do not actually know them). Although more and more research is exploring para-social relationships formed on social media platforms, here you will restrict yourself to a focus on fictional characters.
As relationships with fictional characters are studied by researchers from many different academic disciplines, different terms and ways of conceptualising the relationships tend to be used. So, while some researchers use the term para-social relationships, others might use a different term (which is something to bear in mind if you decide to explore research in this area further).
Activity 1 Friends with (fictional) benefits
Think about some of the fictional characters that you might have had a para-social relationship with and also some of the relationships you have had in real life.
- Jot down one major thing about two or three relationships you have with fictional characters in terms of how you characterise your relationship to them.
- Jot down one major thing about two or three relationships you have with real people in your life.
- Consider what you think are the similarities and differences between these two forms of relationship.
Discussion
Here are some the key similarities and differences that you may have come up with.
Differences:
- Para-social relationships are one sided while real relationships require both people to be active participants.
- Para-social relationships require no effort on your behalf, and no significant investment (apart from reading the book). However real relationships require the investment of time and energy to maintain the relationship.
- Forming a para-social relationship with someone who continues to behave in appalling ways (such as a villain) feels more likely than forming a real friendship with a real person that does.
- Real relationships require some form of proximity, in that you have to actually meet the person, while para-social relationships are formed with characters that are put in front of you.
- In a para-social relationship you can imagine the best possible version of yourself interacting with the other person. In a real relationship, it will be your ordinary, flawed self interacting with another person.
Similarities:
- Forming either sort of relationship is unlikely if the person is not someone we inherently find interesting.
- Both forms of relationship can elicit genuine emotions, and these can be both positive and negative.
- It is possible to worry about what is going to happen to the person in both forms of relationships, although it is often the case that real relationships might cause more worry.
- In both forms of relationship you can have a sense of looking forward to hanging out with the other person, and might even feel like you miss the other person when you are apart from them.
In the next section you will hear from our crime authors about how their readers form relationships with the characters they create in their stories.