2 Likeability and para-social relationships
Interpersonal attraction, namely forming a ‘positive perception of warm feeling’ towards someone (McCroskey and McCain, 1974), tends to be an important factor when it comes to forming a social relationship with someone in real life. Such attraction can have elements that are either physical, finding someone’s appearance to be attractive, or social, such as whether they fit easily into your own social circle. Researchers have suggested that when it comes to initiating a relationship when two individuals meet for the first time, the formation of positive first impressions tends to be characterised by both high attraction and high uncertainty; in other words, we are attracted (including socially, not necessarily physically) to someone, know little about them but are driven to find out more (Knapp, 1978).
Researchers have tended to assume that the formation of para-social relationships follows a similar pattern (Tukachinsky, Walter and Saucier, 2020). A very simple way of putting this is that to want to start either a real social relationship or a para-social relationship with someone, we have to like them.
An interesting question is how, and indeed whether, likeability and attraction feature in crime fiction, where the subject matter and many of the characters pose problems for everyday definitions of what and whom we should like and be attracted to. In the previous section you heard from the authors that their readers do seem to form para-social relationships with their villains (such as with Cafferty in Ian Rankin’s books), but does that mean that the readers liked and were attracted to the villains? In the next section you will hear from our crime authors with regards to how (and whether) they approach the likeability of their characters and particularly their villains.