People who are single or unhappy in their romantic relationships tend to develop stronger romantic feelings for fictional media characters. These findings suggest that one-sided crushes on movie stars or fictional personas can serve as a substitute for unfulfilled emotional needs in real life. The research was published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media.
Psychologists use the term “parasocial phenomena” to describe the one-sided psychological connections viewers form with media figures. First introduced in the 1950s, the concept captures how media consumers can feel as though they are interacting with a character on a screen. These mediated bonds resemble face-to-face social interactions but completely lack any mutual exchange.
Historically, researchers have debated whether these one-sided connections act as a social surrogate. The social surrogacy hypothesis proposes that individuals might use media figures to substitute for real-world social deficits. Past investigations mostly focused on platonic, friendship-like parasocial bonds. The consensus from those studies was generally that lonely individuals do not engage more intensely with media figures than people with active social lives.
Platonic connections represent only one facet of human social behavior. Nicole Liebers, a researcher at the University of Würzburg, conducted this study to explore the neglected romantic dimensions of parasocial phenomena. While platonic media connections might not cure general loneliness, Liebers proposed that romantic media connections might specifically help individuals cope with unfulfilled romantic needs.
Romantic parasocial phenomena involve intense emotional, physical, and sexual attraction toward a character. Liebers designed two studies to test whether relationship status and relationship satisfaction influence how strongly viewers become infatuated with these fictional figures. The research separated these phenomena into immediate parasocial interactions during viewing and long-term parasocial relationships that endure after the screen goes dark.
In the first study, Liebers recruited 96 moviegoers at a public cinema center in Germany. Participants had just watched one of three movies: Wonder Woman, Baywatch, or Transformers 5. These specific films were selected because they all featured at least one male and one female main character that the audience might find attractive.
Researchers asked the participants to complete a smartphone questionnaire immediately after leaving the theater. The viewers identified the specific character they felt most emotionally and sexually attracted to. They then answered questions designed to measure their real-time romantic parasocial interaction, which captures the immediate mental and physical attraction experienced while watching the film.
The researcher divided the participants into three groups based on their social situations. The groups included single individuals who watched the movie with a non-romantic companion, people in relationships who watched with a non-romantic companion, and people who attended the movie with their romantic partner. Individuals who attended the movie alone were excluded from the analysis, as watching a movie alone can alter a viewer’s general immersion in the story.
Liebers found that single individuals experienced more intense romantic parasocial interactions than people who were in a relationship. Specifically, single viewers reported stronger emotional love and a higher desire to interact with the character. The two groups did not differ in their physical attraction to the characters.
The social setting of the theater also influenced the viewers’ experiences. People who attended the movie with their romantic partner reported lower emotional and physical attraction to the characters compared to coupled people who attended without their partner. Having a romantic partner present in the room appeared to dampen the immediate romantic connection to the media figure.
The second study expanded the focus from real-time reactions to long-term romantic attachments. Liebers surveyed 358 volunteers online, asking them to recall a media character from any recently watched movie to whom they felt romantically and sexually attracted. The open-ended prompt resulted in a wide range of reported characters, from Magic Mike to Princess Jasmine in Aladdin.
Participants reported their current relationship status. Those who were currently in a relationship also completed a questionnaire assessing their overall relationship satisfaction, answering questions about how well their partner met their needs. Finally, all participants answered questions measuring their ongoing romantic parasocial relationship with their chosen character.
Unlike the immediate reactions measured in the first study, a parasocial relationship describes a bond that endures well after the movie ends. This survey allowed participants to select from a wide variety of movies. It provided a broader look at how these one-sided romances function in daily life.
Mirroring the first study, single participants developed stronger long-term romantic parasocial relationships than coupled participants. In this broader context, single individuals reported higher levels of both emotional love and physical attraction toward the characters. The data indicated that lacking a real-world romantic partner heightened the overall intensity of the fictional romance.
For participants who were in a relationship, their satisfaction with their real-life partner played a defining role. Lower relationship satisfaction predicted stronger emotional love for the fictional character. However, relationship satisfaction had no statistically significant effect on the physical attraction viewers felt toward the character.
These results suggest that emotional closeness might be a more important driver of parasocial romances than physical attraction. People with unfulfilled romantic needs appear to seek out emotional bonding with fictional characters to compensate for what they lack in real life. This finding aligns with the idea that the human drive for emotional love is often stronger than the drive for physical gratification.
These observational findings rely on self-reported data, which can introduce certain biases. For example, people watching a movie while sitting next to their romantic partner might simply feel more reluctant to admit they are attracted to a fictional character. The social desirability of reporting a crush could vary greatly depending on who is standing nearby.
The research design also prevents definitive conclusions about cause and effect. It is possible that individuals turn to media characters to compensate for romantic deficits. But it is equally possible that engaging in intense parasocial romances creates unrealistic expectations, which then lowers a person’s satisfaction with their real-world partner.
Future research will need to measure subjective feelings of romantic loneliness directly, rather than relying solely on relationship status as a proxy. Tracking these media habits over time could clarify whether fictional romances truly heal unfulfilled needs or simply complicate existing relationships. Accounting for a viewer’s prior exposure to an actor could also help isolate the exact mechanisms driving these one-sided love affairs.
The study, “Unfulfilled Romantic Needs: Effects of Relationship Status, Presence of Romantic Partners, and Relationship Satisfaction on Romantic Parasocial Phenomena,” was authored by Nicole Liebers.