Fictional friends and enemies as first aid after ostracism? Experimentally investigating the potential of para-/orthosocial relationships in belongingness need restoration and emotion regulation

Oxford University Press 2024 2024-07-08

Being socially excluded seriously threatens individuals’ need to belong and emotional well-being. This article investigates to what extent different coping strategies help overcome these detrimental effects: thinking about real-life friends/enemies (i.e., orthosocial relationships, OSRs) and thinking about (dis)liked media characters (i.e., parasocial relationships, PSRs). Across three experiments (NPilot = 129, NStudy1 = 132, NStudy2 = 855), we first induced social exclusion using a virtual ball-tossing game. Afterward, we manipulated different relationship types and valences and compared them to non- or less-relational control conditions. As hypothesized, belongingness and emotional well-being increased from pre- to post-coping. This effect was fully mediated by perceived relationship closeness to the respective person(a). Highlighting that PSRs represent more than surrogates (i.e., secondary replacements of OSR), both relationship types did not differ in coping effectiveness. Moreover, positive relationships were more effective in fulfilling both coping goals than negative ones.

social exclusion, ostracism, coping, parasocial relationships, social surrogate; Zweitveröffentlichung; info:eu-repo/classification/ddc/300; ddc:300; Ausgrenzung; Bewältigung; Parasoziale Interaktion; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion; doc-type:article; info:eu-repo/semantics/article; doc-type:Text

Open access content. Open access content
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

English

SUUSL oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:92523
urn:nbn:de:bsz:ch1-qucosa2-925238
1446801020

STAATS U UNIV
From OAIster®, provided by the OCLC Cooperative.

edsoai.on1446801020