Relationships Past Paper Questions - AQA

Relationships Past Paper Questions - AQA Levels of Parasocial relationships (CAS) - ANS Celebrity Altitude Scale: - Entertainment Social - Intense-personal - Borderline pathological - Entertainment - social: least intense level where celebrities are viewed as sources of entertainment & fuel for social interaction. - Intense-personal: personally involved, obsessive thoughts. - Borderline pathological - Strongest. Uncontrollable fantasies, behaviour is more extreme Absorption addiction model (A01) - ANS Explains parasocial relationships in terms of people's life deficiencies. McCutcheon suggest they make up for personal deficiencies (lack of fulfilment). Escape from mundane lives. People may be triggered towards a higher level of life events eg. bereavement. Model has two components. Absorption and Addiction. (A01) - ANS Absorption: seeking fulfilment in celebrity worship, motivates individual to focus attention on celebrity, to become absorbed in celebrities existence and identify with them Addiction: Like a psychological addiction, individual needs to increase their 'dose' of involvement to gain satisfaction. This may lead to more extreme behaviours and delusional thinking. The attachment theory explaination (A01) - ANS Links early attachment problems to para-social relationships - Bowlby's attachment theory = early difficulties in attachment mat lead to difficulties forming relationships in later life. Such difficulties may lead to a preference for parasocial relationships to replace those within one's own social circle as parasocial relationships do not require social skills. Insecure Attachment Types are linked to parasocial relationships - Ainsworth because they have their unfulfilled needs met in a relationship where there is no real threat of rejection. One strength is research support for the absorption addiction model (A03) - ANS One strength is research support for the absorption addiction model. Maltby et al. (2005) studied female adolescents who reported an intense personal relationship with a female celebrity whose body image they admired - females tend to have poor body image (precursor to eating problem) linked entertainment social with extroverted personality traits Intense personal - neurotic traits Borderline pathological - psychotic personality type Both studies support the model & show correlation between the level of celebrity worship and different disordered psychological functioning One limitation = lacks explanatory power (A03) - ANS Lacks explanatory power - model describes the characteristics of people at different levels of intensity but doesn't explain why the different forms develop. It doesn't help to prevent the more dangerous or disturbing elements of parasocial relationships. So the model is limited in it's explanatory power and it's application for supporting people who celebrity worship has become problematic. One limitation of link to attachment = lack of support (A03) - ANS McCutcheon et al. (2006) Found participants with insecure attachments = no more likely to form parasocial relationships with celebrities than PPTS w/ secure attachment types. This is there key assumption - failure to find support questions it's validity. Has little predictive strength. There are three elements to parasocial relationships which include... - ANS Levels of parasocial relationships, the absorption-addiction model and the attachment theory explanation Parasocial relationships are... - ANS One-sided relationships where one person may expend considerable emotional energy and time towards the other Parasocial relationships typically develop with... - ANS Celebrities or people in the public domain McCutcheon (2002) developed the... - ANS Celebrity Attitude Scale, which measures items within the three levels of parasocial relationships that can develop with each level describing attitudes and behaviors The first level of the celebrity attitude scale is the... - ANS Entertainment social level. This is the least intense level where celebrities are viewed as sources of entertainment and fuel for social interaction