Assessing the Predictive Value of Parasocial Relationship Intensity in a Political Context

Abstract

This study explores the ability of parasocial relationships to predict support for political candidates and elected officials. A May 2017 survey of U.S. adults ( N = 2,055) included items that reflect traditional approaches to the study of candidate support (e.g., political party identification, policy agreement) along with several batteries of a newly developed political parasocial relationship (PPSR) measure. This study gives primary attention to predicting support for U.S. President Donald J. Trump, but also focuses on Secretary Hillary Clinton and U.S. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Parasocial relations prove to be a powerful predictor of Trump-Support, outperforming all other predictors (including past voting behavior). This study also explores what predicts citizen-politician PPSR. Citizens’ parasocial relationships with Trump are predicted by general political knowledge (–), 2016 Trump voting (+), support for Trump’s policies (+), along with news media exposure (+), and social media following of Trump (+).

Measuring the feeling of distant intimacy with politicians: Development, construct validity, and replicability of the parasocial relationship with a political figure (PSR-P) scale

“…Dunne and Nisbett (2014) modified 12 items from the short version of the PSI scale (A. M. Rubin & Perse, 1987) to assess parasocial interaction with political candidates on web pages and social media. Additionally, they selected and modified five items (e.g., "the webpage shows me what this candidate is really like," "when I viewed the candidate webpage I felt like part of a group," "I see this candidate as a natural, down to earth person," "this candidate understands what I need, "and "this candidate understands what I want") to measure perceived intimacy while viewing the candidate's web page for the reason that the items describe perceptions of a reciprocal relationship A slightly different approach was taken by Cohen and Holbert (2018), whereby they selected 12 items from the long version (20 items) of the PSI scale (A. M. Rubin et al, 1985) in devising the Political Parasocial Relationship (PPSR) scale to measure the feeling of connection to several political figures including Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Paul Ryan. Interestingly, three items of this PPSR scale were almost identical to those of Dunn and Nisbett's (2014) measure of perceived intimacy with political candidates during media exposure (i.e.…”

“…The construct of parasocial relationships with political figures, as J. Cohen and Holbert (2018) asserted, may extend current models of political behaviour by more emphasising its interpersonal rather than ideological or group-based elements.…”

“…M. Rubin, Perse, & Powell, 1985) the Parasocial Interaction (PSI) scale has become the most frequently used scale to assess various forms of parasocial relationships, and also has been adopted into political contexts (J. Cohen & Holbert, 2018). However, recent critical reviews of the theory have concerned limitations of the scale and its derivatives.…”

“…In addition, existing scales of political parasocial relationships have used 12 and 13 indicators which may not be efficient to measure a single factor (see Dunn & Nisbett, 2014;J. Cohen & Holbert, 2018).…”

Political Para-Social Relationship as a Predictor of Voting Preferences in the Israeli 2019 Elections

“…However, since these studies were conducted after the US election, they could not demonstrate the ability of PPSR to predict voting. Also, because both studies (Cohen & Holbert, 2018;Gabriel et al, 2018) were cross-sectional, the ability to establish the causal time order was limited. After all, it is not unreasonable that after voting for a candidate we feel closer to them.…”