The Dark Side of Fandom: Exploring the Association between Parasocial Relationships with Celebrities and Aggression

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

With the rapid proliferation of social media, individuals who admire certain celebrities—i.e. fans—now have access to extensive and increasingly interactive means to follow their idols and engage with fellow fans. While this has been linked to stronger parasocial relationships between fans and celebrities, as well as several psychological benefits such as a stronger sense of belonging, digital fan engagement might also reinforce conflicts between different fandoms. Referring to social identity theory, this pre-registered study explores the potential dark side of the contemporary fan experience. Allowing for cross-cultural comparisons, data were collected from 265 Chinese and German pop culture fans. The findings suggest that the strength of fans’ parasocial relationships with their idols is positively related to in-group identification, out-group hostility, and behavioral aggression toward other fandoms. Intriguingly, cross-cultural differences emerged, as Chinese fans displayed higher levels of in-group identification, out-group hostility, and behavioral aggression toward other fandoms than German fans. Likewise, only the data from our Chinese participants revealed a moderating effect of social media use on the connection between parasocial relationships and out-group hostility.