Ayayay! AI/HCI and II/PSI/PSR

This is post is actually a WIP, but I wanted to get some thoughts down regarding II/PSI/PSR and AI/HCI before they evaporate from my mind. So if you see the untied-up ends and other bizarrities, fear not -- they are just ideas for now.


We are witnessing “one of the most profound changes in communication since the invention of cuneiform and the clay tablet -- the technology which first made it possible to imprint symbols of human vocal messages and to transport them physically from sender to receiver” (Cathcart & Gumpert, 1986). This change in communication is not gradual -- it is exponential. As we race toward the Technological Singularity, the term “mass communication” has become a hangover buzzword. Mass Communication no longer exists under the traditional definition except during major events such as 9/11 and the Superbowl. Media effects have become much more audience-member-specific and no longer can be assessed in terms of effects on the masses as easily as they were when we had fewer media options. Our interactions with mediated people and events are primarily imaginative and deeply personal. It is difficult to assume that a message will have a uniform effect on the aggregate. For these reasons, “mediated communication” may better describe our individual interactions with messages coming to us through traditional mass-media.

This can be explained as a result of a larger variety of media outlets and the human tendency toward selectivity. As for the role of selectivity, research has uncovered many motivations: reinforcing beliefs, especially voting intentions (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, & Gaudet, 1968), alleviating cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957), mood management through TV viewing choices (Bryant & Zillmann, 1984), various political orientations such as knowledge and partisanship (Johnson, Bichard, & Zhang, 2009) to name but a few. Work by Freedman and Sears (1965) suggested other plausible explanations for selective exposure phenomena, namely information utility and contextual/lifestyle circumstances that predispose people to exposure to some types of messages. For example, smokers tend to see more cigarette ads than non-smokers -- not because they were looking to advertisements to alleviate dissonance regarding their habit, but because points of cigarette purchases often have advertisements for cigarettes. Our lifestyles invariably lead to exposure to information that supports them. As a result of Freedman & Sears’ (1965) work, the theory’s development in regard to mass media was temporarily slowed. However, cable diffused in the 1980s followed by the Internet in the 1990s, effectively creating an explosion of media choices. As Potter (2004) tells us,

We live in an environment that is far different than any environment humans have ever experienced, and the environment changes at an ever-increasing pace. This is due to the accelerating generation of information, the sharing of that information through an increasing number of media channels, and the heavy traffic of media vehicles traversing those channels. Messages are being delivered to everyone, everywhere, constantly, We are all saturated with information (p.7).

Selective exposure again became a theory of interest for explaining media choices in the early part of the twentieth century.

Adding to the complexity of the study of mediated communication is the existence of artificial intelligence (AI). Once a sci-fi staple made famous by HAL 9000, C3PO, and even Arnold Schwarzenegger, it is now something we deal with every day. Increasingly AI is becoming the go-between, inhabiting the world between us and the information we seek. A simple Google search puts AI to service. More importantly, it is becoming “smarter” and better-able to respond to us. As authors such as Ray Kurzwweil (FIND A CITE) argue, it is becoming smarter and faster exponentially.

Several authors have argued that search engines not only alters brain function (Small, Moody, Siddarth, & Bookheimer, 2009), but might make us stupid (Carr, 2008)! Others argue human, rather than technological determinism, and claim the Internet exists as a result of who we are. “Is stupid making us Google?” (Bowman, 2008); Is the Internet just another product of larger currents in civilization, such as a human tendency toward formation of networks (Castells, 2004)? Considering media dependency theory (Ball-Rokeach & Defleur, 1976) it is likely that as we continue to adjust to the company of AI we will grow more dependent upon it to accomplish many common tasks.

As we become more dependent on AI, it becomes even more necessary to develop a framework for understanding how humans communicate with it. Somewhere in the middle ground between psychology, interpersonal communication, and mass communication is the study of parasociability. Originally, parasocial research dealt with exploring our relationships with television personalities (personae), and parasocial interaction and relationships were defined as “one-sided.” Through imaginative processes we tend to make parasocial relationships two-sided and use them for such purposes as gaining self-understanding and keeping up with the personae, much as we do in our imagined interaction with real people (Madison & Porter, 2012). Parasocial interaction and relationships were originally described as one-sided interaction (Horton & Wohl, 1956). An on-screen personae communicates a message or behaves in a certain way, and the audience responds in a manner that suggests we are responding to a real person. Such interaction might be yelling at football players on television, recoiling in disgust at a horror movie, or even laughing in response to a joke. This demonstrates that a viewer, by watching television, plays a role that is different from other roles they may play in other areas of life.

Technology has changed parasociability by opening up relationships with mediated personae and delivering to us countless interactivity options. With the advent of social media, parasociability is better-described as two-sided. Fans of actors, athletes, and politicians have the opportunity to actually receive responses from personae. With the advancement of video game complexity and narratives, parasocial interaction is clearly two-sided. Video game designers purposely place parasocial cues in video games. A narrator may, as Horton & Wohl (1956) described, coach a viewer through a relationship using gestures, body language, and carefully-chosen scripts. This trend in video gaming is likely to continue (Bopp, 2006).

Most people are not yet ready to accept AI as an actual human being, but we certainly have 2-sided interaction with everything we do with AI. Many representations of NPCs in video games might be described in the same way as other fictionalized characters: more like “good neighbors” than close friends of relatives (De Backer, Nelissen, Vyncke, Braeckman, & McAndrew, 2007).

The study of parasociability provides a useful basis for understanding our relationships with AI. It’s not quite a person, but we tend to interact with it as if it were a real person. Imagined interaction theory, which has largely been studied through a functionalist perspective (i.e. Honeycutt, 2003, 2010) and has specific pertinence to the study of human-AI-Interaction.

Before exploring AI through a parasocial lens, it is necessary to define it. What is it? Is it a practical tool? Is it a personality? Is it just a set of algorithms that take code, process it, and create new code? Are we ourselves anything more than just a set of algorithms that take code, process it, and create new code – with physical features?

A question that mass communication researchers should be asking is “How does AI as a middleman change the influence of information – journalism, public relations, advertising, political communication – on individuals?”

Arguably, using parasociability to negotiate with AI began with video games. I myself recall attributing human characteristics to various human, alien, animal, and robotic representations of opponents (Non-Playing Characters; NPCs) against whom I battled, mesmerized for hours on end. The Atari 2600 and original Nintendo brought these representations into my home and as a child and later a teenager found myself learning to negotiate with (read: destroy) them. Several joysticks met their fates as I slammed them down in frustrated parasocial interactions.

Video games taught me about personality. Just as different people move in different ways, so too do video game opponents. The Pitfall alligators were harmless when their mouths were closed. When their mouths were open they had a tendency to devour the representation of myself in a single bite. Living in Louisiana, I quickly learned that alligators are not completely harmless, but they are certainly less dangerous when their mouths are closed. Later as an adolescent I learned how not to impress women as I explored the landscape of seedy characters in Lost Wages , a.k.a. the Land of the Lounge Lizards, and home to “Leisure Suit” Larry Laffer. One does not approach a woman with the words “Hey baby” and playing the role of Larry showed me exactly why. Plus, the words “hey baby” could lead to contracting a veneral disease.

Dancing With The Atoms

I know this was started as a blog about my developing insights on our relationships with mediated messages. Sticking to the theme has its merits of course, but it is when we step outside our familiar zones of understanding and comfort that we begin to grow, often reinterpreting our understandings and producing new insight that may inspire more intuition than the original ones. In other words, travel is mind-expanding. Sometimes the travel may involve physically moving from Point A to Point B, or it may involve travelling from Point A to Point C20H25N3O, or it may involve just reading another blog on foreign auto repair that somehow describes principles that can be applied to other circumstances, such as media effects. Again, stepping outside of “the house” leads us to new experiences and new ideas. Today’s blog post is a result of seeing what else is out there.

Some ideas have recently come together in my mind and need to be expressed before they get diluted, overgrown, or just vanish from the ideasphere. The first is Kurzweil and his prediction of The Technological Singularity. The second is the uses and gratifications assumption that people tend to approach mediated characters in manners similar to those in which they approach real-life characters.

I imagine most people react with horror when confronted with the idea of artificial intelligence advancing beyond human intelligence, especially after seeing all those Matrix and Terminator movies. In entertainment, the machinery can always be interpreted as a metaphor for ourselves, and humans are always the oppressed, either serving as batteries or some kind of threat to silicate dominance over carbon. I had an employer once who was incredibly insecure; she felt she had to adopt an image as a ruthless manager to be able to be respected in an institutional division predominantly composed of men. Her ruthless management tactics made many people feel dehumanized, and she proved to be an effective manager but incompetent as a leader. We tend to attribute such inflexible management styles to machines, but attribute leadership and inspiration to humans, such as John Connor, though his leadership style may be considered inhuman in a call center setting, but quite inspirational in a post-apocalyptic setting. We all need both leadership and management in our lives, and carbon and silicon, in our minds, have quite different attributes. We consider leadership and inspiring people to success to be human and associated with carbon-based lifeforms, but what about AI and silicon-based life. Silicon has the potential to be intelligent, possibly more so than its carbon-based creators.

If it is intelligent, however, is it artificial? Would it have values in any similar sense as humans have values, dreams, and ideas that we pursue? Or is the relationship more like a carbon atom picking up a silicon atom and using it as a tool, much like the scene from 2001 in which an ape picks up a bone and changes history? And could we be looking at a process in which carbon life begets silicon life, which begets tin-based life, which begets lead-based life, and so forth. If this notion sounds bizarre, take a look at a periodic table and remember that all these elements have 4-bonds, and being able to engage four different atoms at once may be a basis for any form of life. Perhaps it is also a chemometaphor for how we should manage our own lives: no more than 4 major pursuits at a time.

A quick perusal of the Internet suggests that carbon has the most stable of bonds with other atoms, relative to other elements that exist in the +4 state, with silicon a second. Life forms have to be rugged and durable to survive, as far as we know, and forms of life based on +4 atoms deeper in the periodic table, with greater chemical weights may not be able to survive. It is for this reason that I believe AI will serve more as an extension of carbon-based life, likely a kaleidoscope of tools for assisting the struggle for existence, but life will always be limited to carbon-based structures.

My take on The Technological Singularity, courtesy of Kurzweil, is that we are in store for more of a human-machine hybrid future. Human minds interacting with AI, or perhaps ending up in a synergistic relationship between AI and human minds. Carbon and silicon dancing together at a honky tonk, surrounded by oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and whatever other elements are necessary for communication between various components. Kurzweil suggests that we will be replaced at a cellular level by silicon-based machines which fight off our old friends known as diseases and old age. I like to believe that such a scenario – one in which our cells are gradually replaced by better nanomachines, is an inspiring one, and am no longer particularly horrified by the idea. In fact, understanding biological functions, characteristics, and makeup to the point we can do a better job of performing the same tasks through engineering has a certain appeal for me.

Legos Come Together

I think back to the classic “John E. Smoke” by those legends of psychedelia, the Butthole Surfers. I have no idea what the song’s about, but one of the lines is “Upwardly he did evolve.” That line probably means something in its original context, or in the case of many Buttholes songs, it might actually be meaningless. In my head it has snowballed into significance over the years and provides a poetic basis for my perspective on media effects. See, I argue that media technology is not what determines who we are, but that greater forces (the same ones that make us human) send us out to evolve our species, and technology is a byproduct alongside which we co-evolve. The state of the human brain is in a sort of adolescence; as we rewire it with help from media technology, we make it more efficient at processing information. According to evolution theory, those with brains better-equipped to process inundations of information will pass their genes into the future and those without will be less likely to influence the trajectory of our species. But I digress.

For the purposes of this argument, the term “media” refers specifically to a physical object that transmits, receives, amplifies, or in some way stands between ourselves and a message. Invoking pieces of a McLuhanian perspective, various media are extensions of our natural senses. They have even evolved to a point where we can create and interact with many mediated scenes. In general I do not disagree with McLuhan’s perspective on what media are, nor that the global village concept is a reasonable outcome of connectivity. McLuhan, however, argues that “The medium is the message” because it is the “medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action.” (Understanding Media, NY, 1964, p. 9). There may be elements of truth in this statement, but media are powerless over people. Ultimately it is people who create their own effects out of messages they experience through media. In light of this, “media effects” may be a misnomer; we actually look for, find, and experience message effects.

The effects of media and the effects of messages need to be conceptually separated. TVs, radios, computers, and cell phones have a very specific set of effects on us. These effects are related to the logistics of medium ownership: purchasing our media, storing our media, moving our media around and/or not moving ourselves around, paying the power bill, etc. One could make an argument that the form and appearance of media could potentially affect our cognition, affection, and behavior -- older television sets may have a “nostalgic” feel to their look, wooden stereo speaker cabinets sound better than plastic to some people, CRT and backlit screens may cause damage to our vision over the long term whereas LCD displays may take longer to do the same thing. There is little question that media do affect our physical environment (we often organize our living areas around televisions or clusters of media) as well as the functioning of our bodies, but far more interesting are the cognitive and affective effects associated with messages. Technically these types of “media effects” are not effects of the media themselves, but effects that occur in response to processing messages.

Determinists, such as McLuhan, argue that once we come into contact with a new technology, we are forever changed as we assimilate its function into our daily lives. Their argument appears sound; the invention of alphabets seems to have rewired our brains for reading rather than listening, the printing press helped mass-produce this rewiring, and later, electronic media did the same thing. A team of researchers recently found that Internet savvy people’s brains light up in all sorts of areas under an MRI, such as reasoning and decision making areas, whereas the brains of those with limited Google experience only showed activity in centers that control language and such. Unfortunately, technology does not (yet) allow us to dig up the brains of people who died 4000 years ago to determine what parts were more developed than others, so as to compare them with contemporary brains.

Others have made the argument that networks have become the basic units of society; social organization and the needs that arise from a network society are what produce technology to satisfy those needs. Fred Turner wrote a book placing the filthy hippie how-to manual Whole Earth Catalog at the root of modern social organization; large-scale desire in the 1960s for communal living outside and independent from the hustle and bustle of modern life. He describes a scenario where eggheads working on cybernetic antiaircraft weapons, dropped-out communalists, natural promoters like Stewart Brand, artists, and chemists with the knowledge to manufacture such technologies as LSD were getting into the chemists’ stash, partying into the 5th dimension, and coming up with stuff like the WELL, a forerunner of Al Gore’s Internet.
Now let’s get back to message effects for a second. Several large bodies of scientific literature blends interpersonal communication variables with media effects research and makes it difficult to not conclude that we are active users of media who do pretty much with media the same damn things we do in interpersonal communication. This is where McLuhan’s notion that technology is extensions of our sensory apparatus comes into play. Tires are extensions of our feet, radio is an extension of our ears, television is an extension of our eyes, and Internet is an extension of who knows what, but I would argue it’s an extension of our nervous systems, particularly our brains. We use technology to extend ourselves beyond corporeal form to do the same things we would do in our corporeal form with other people. In so doing, our brains re-wire themselves to make us better-able to operate in our environments, and our environments extend beyond the dark room with the shades drawn and a computer glowing in the corner.
I better offer a couple of caveats here. Because distant scenes are often mediated by television or Internet, they may have less of an immediate effect on our minds and imaginations than real life interaction with others, but what can we expect? Mediated interactions are not immediately threatening to our physiology and technology provides us time to think about how to react before we actually react to mediated stimuli. Distance between us and “the action” may diminish the cognitive, affective, and behavioral effects of our interactions, but it does not make them less real. I would argue that among various online communities, though most of or none of us have ever met other members in person, are still real communitied cemented by our mediated interactions and perpetuated by our imagined interactions.

Another notion worth mentioning is selectivity. Selectivity is a survival mechanism. At one point in human history it served as a means of drawing our attention to those things that could harm us, whether they were the teeth of a tiger, a much larger enemy brandishing a club, or a slippery and dangerous path alongside a cliff. Living submerged in information brought to us by various and multiple media, selectivity continues to help us survive by drawing our attention to those things and people that are like us, and that in which we may find a useful tool or ally. Should our selective processes be shut down, we would find ourselves in a state nonconducive to our survival. Selectivity, arguably, is the one thing keeping us from becoming overwhelmed by details or being overwhelmed by extraneous and useless information that neither helps us to make decisions nor appears in any pattern we can interpret in a meaningful way.

So what was my point? My point is that it’s normal to feel overwhelmed as we sort through seas of propaganda looking for truth. Ultimately what we find as truth will reflect who we are – our desires, beliefs, dreams, etc. the process of discovering that truth will rewire our brains and create new and different needs for information in different forms. In response to those needs we will create new technologies to satisfy them. Greater forces than technology, however, guide the human spirit – we pretty much do the same things through media that we would do with other people. Moreover, the process isn’t painless or comfortable; as far as I know, nobody has ever written about life being painless and comfortable – such a rant wouldn’t be marketable.

That’s what I think, at least for today. What do you think?

The Basis of My Lego Structure

I’ve finished the written portion of my comps. In 5 days I wrote something like 28 pages, single-spaced, about various things. The point of the exercise was to emerge from it with a philosophy, and I think I may have accomplished that. The following is a work in progress; they are assumptions implicit in my understanding of people’s relationship with media. Where noteworthy and simple, I offer intellectual credit to those who formed the basis of my thinking. Now, this is not a theory; it is a perspective.

1. Media use has greater cognitive, affective, and behavioral effects than simple exposure.
2. People approach mediated messages in many of the same ways they approach interpersonal relationships.
3. People maintain relationships with mediated messages and personae through imagined interactions (Honeycutt, Conflict-Linkage theory, 2008).
4. People seek out media messages that are consonant or that somehow reinforce their current affective, cognitive, and behavioral states.
5. People are active in their own cultivation of ideas; perspectives become stronger through repeated exposure to consonant messages; dissonant messages are ignored or forgotten.
6. People get songs stuck in their heads, possibly as an innate social learning function (Shaughan Keaton).
7. Media are extensions of our natural senses (McLuhan, 1967).
8. Interactivity lessens the distance between us and messages, opening the door to parasocial relationships and presence in mediated transactions.
9. Due in part to interactivity and abundance of choices, “mass communication” is, for the most part, a misnomer.
10. Intermediary forces, such as interpersonal communication about a mediated message, may transform limited effects into powerful effects (Rogers, Klapper).
    

Again, this is a work in progress. If I had to acknowledge theories in this personal construction of mediated reality, this set of assumptions would be somewhere between uses and gratifications, selective exposure, and cultivation theories. As I mentioned in the annals of my comprehensive exam, limited effects theories still work brilliantly but the powerful effects theories need work. The problem with powerful effects theories is that they deal with audiences rather than individuals and can no longer really identify patterns among the masses. Some of their notions, however, should not be thrown out with the bathwater. Media continue to tell us what to think about (McCombs, Shah, et al.) as well as how to think about it (McCombs, Entman, et al.)and the aggregate of mediated messages to which we attend probably has effects on us over time (Gerbner and associates).

Now selectively expose yourself to the following so that you may think about it and cultivate your ideas. I'll figure out how to add the thumbnail later.

Fun times-- BTW -- Shoutout to Kristin!

60s Retro Day: Legos From The Past

Ever notice how songs can make you feel nostalgic for decades that occurred before you were even born. How can we be nostalgic about something we never experienced?

Just found a handful of loving written in 1960 by Joseph Klapper. I love it when I think I'm a brilliant supergenius based on work and study, analysis, comprehension and all the other things that go into developing a personal theory or perspective, and then I run into something that articulated 50 years ago my thoughts precisely.

Klapper argued that media effects are not hypodermic and direct. Instead, “communication itself appears to be no sufficient cause of the effect, but rather to function amid other factors and conditions, which, though external to the communication, seem to mediate its influence in such a way as to render it an agent of reinforcement rather than change” (p.18). Some of these factors include our internal rehearsal processes as well as selectivity in exposure, perception, and retention. I will add one caveat to Klapper’s statement – that is that communication can spark curiosity and imagination, which leads to exploration, and possibly creation and/or de facto reinforcement. This is facilitated by interactivity.

Klapper (196) cites five mediating factors and conditions regarding reinforcement. It is “abetted by”

1) Predispositions and the related process of selective exposure, selective perception, and selective retention,

2) The groups, and the norms of groups, to which the audience members belong,

3) Interpersonal dissemination of the content of communications,

4) The exercise of opinion leadership, and

5) The nature of mass media in a free enterprise society.

Arguably, these factors make the difference in limited and powerful effects. Klapper (1960) then explains how media effects occur.

People tend to expose themselves to things consonant with existing views and avoid things that challenge those views. Selective perception refers to perceiving something in a way that fits with existing thoughts. In a diffusion experiment (Allport & Postman), a photo of a white guy with a razor arguing with a black guy on a train was shown to people. People then talked about what they saw in the photo. Like “gossip” or “telephone,” the story changed as it diffused. The razor tended to end up in the black guy’s hand. I think of the “You lie, boy” politician. Among people who thought he was a racist, their minds added the “boy” part to make his statement fit with pre-existing cognitions. Selective retention refers to exactly what it suggests: people remember messages or parts of messages that are consonant with their existing beliefs.

Klapper stops short of cultivation theory when he notes that “what might happen to the selective processes over such a period [of continuous exposure to propaganda] is as yet largely a matter of speculation” (p. 25).

Klapper, J. T. (1960). The effects of mass communication. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press.

Caughey is a Lego Unto Himself

“As American idols, media figures do not merely influence one narrow aspect of life. They influence values, goals, and attitudes, and through this they exert a pervasive influence on social conduct” (Caughey, 1984, p. 60). I argue that as active audience members, we readily latch on to their influence and process it in a way that leads us to develop internal scripting that we then use in our interpersonal relationships.

Caughey (1984) examined parasocial relationships using terminology outside the language of media research. His chapter is a collection of case studies that he analyzes and is an important work that could lead to an understanding of the functions and characteristics of PSI/PSR.

II literature refers to the use of IIs for the compensation of lack of communication. Caughey (1984) posited a “substitute lover” explanation. The main assumption of such an explanation is that the substitute (imaginary) lover will disappear once a person finds a real lover. The author argues that this assumption is not true.It also assumes that real lovers are better than imaginary ones. This is not necessarily the case, as people have to put up with a real lover’s burps, problems, etc. “In some ways, fantasy lovers are better than real lovers” (p. 50). Real people carry warts, but imaginary ones generally do not. Plus, imaginary lovers are carefully photographed and packaged for sale, unlike real people. Through the fantasy process we tend to make these types of relationships superior to real ones; “a media love relationship is exquisitely tuned not to the needs of the celebrity, but to the needs of the self” (p. 51). Caughey (1984) argues that the fantasies run over and over again from first meeting of the celebrity to courtship to marriage and living happily ever after. This echoes the rehearsal function of IIs in which we run through imagined interactions and build scripts for behavior. Though fantasizing about celebrities may lead to building scripts, we are often aware that we will never use those scripts, yet we enjoy them just the same.

Sometimes, relationships with celebrities take on a negative valence. We may watch televangelists, talk show hosts, or others on television and have negative fantasies. This may be related to the self-dominance characteristic of IIs. Some of Caughey’s (1984) informants “have developed antagonisms to local talk show hosts, and sometimes they watch such shows for the pleasure of hating the celebrity … soap opera fans are often as interested in characters they dislike as those they admire” (p. 52). This observation is supported by Raney’s (2004) addenda to affective-disposition theory (we tend to like characters with whom we identify and give them moral latitude), as well as Weber, et al.’s (2008) affective disposition study of soap operas. “It may seem amusing that an actor who plays a villainous soap opera husband is regularly stopped on the street and berated for treating his ‘wife’ so badly. Unfortunately, serious attacks sometimes result from such imaginary relationships” (p. 53).

By far the most common group of relationships with media characters involves simple admiration. Caughey (1984) cites people such as John Wayne, James Dean, and Bruce Springsteen as celebrities whose work we feel teaches us to be better people. One of his participants looked to Mary Tyler Moore for guidance on “how to be a woman,” another looked to John Wayne for guidance on how to be a man. This points toward looking to television characters to help us write our own internal scripts for behavior in our private interpersonal relationships with real people.

Sometimes, media effects on the people around us may lead them to treat us in a manner that helps us develop our own internal scripts. One of Macaughey’s (1984) interviewees naturally looked and acted like a popular television character, though he himself was unfamiliar with the show. His peers noticed the resemblance and started calling him “Tony,” telling him they saw him on TV the night before. The interviewee soon found himself playing the part in real-life:

Often I would dress like him … naturally I was soon anxiously awaiting the weekly airing of the series and soon had assimilated many of his mannerisms. Although I never sounded like him, I do say many of his phrases … the TV character probably helped cement my character into the mold that is now me. (p. 55).

Caughey (1984) further argues that “once the initial identification has been made, patterned forms of behavior typically develop” (p. 55). This is a direct link between media effects to internal scripting. Initial contact with a persona may lead to a parasocial relationship, which is reinforced by further media consumption, leading to internal scripting, leading to scripted thinking and behavior.

The third type of celebrity fantasy involves actually becoming the celebrity. A person begins to dress, think, and act like their favorite character; this may be the type of fantasy that drives Elvis and Michael Jackson impersonators. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some impersonators go so far as to have plastic surgery to look more like their idols. Often people prone to these types of fantasies derive comfort when behaving in a way they feel their celebrity idol would behave.

Perhaps most importantly is that Caughey’s (1984) work demonstrates that obsession with celebrities, modeling, and building internal scripts is not a characteristic unique to Western audiences. Interviewees in Pakistan expressed a similar process of modeling celebrities and trying to live up to the ideals of these characters. This suggests that it is a human function to look to celebrities for guidance in our own interpersonal lives. Script-building is one result of looking at such guidance, and suggests that media have powerful effects on our interpersonal communication through our fantasies and intrapersonal communication.

Horton & Wohl: The Classic Lego

Research into parasocial interactions between television audience members and characters they see on television has an extensive history. Horton & Wohl (1956) provided the largely descriptive yet seminal work on parasocial interactions.

Actors and audiences both have roles to fill and relationships are achieved through building a bond of intimacy. Horton & Wohl (1956) note that the mass media give viewers (and listeners) an illusion of face-to-face communication with the performer, and call this “seeming face-to-face relationship between spectator and performer a para-social relationship” (p. 215). The performer is a “persona,” and the persona works within various technical devices to make a continuing and regular connection with the audience. This connection is achieved when the performer successfully duplicates the gestures and conversational style their character would use in a social situation to create the illusion of intimacy. The authors also discuss breaking through the fourth wall, but they treat it as a general goal rather than a gimmick. For talk shows, they may be correct, but for fictional programming, their assessment does not generally apply.

The authors argue that producers use numerous devices to coach audience attitudes, such as face-to-face interactions between the studio audience and a persona; technicians, guests, and professional assistants acting as subordinates to the persona, reading excerpts from fan mail. Within this complex set of relationships among actors, the audience is coached through a type of showbiz propaganda to support the show and actors in whatever way the producers see fit. A key point made by Horton & Wohl (1956) links television viewing to social learning theory:

The spectator is instructed variously in the behaviors of the opposite sex, of people of higher and lower status, of people in particular occupations and professions. In a quantitative sense, by reason of the sheer volume of each instruction, this may be the most important aspect of the para-social experience, if only because each person’s roles are relatively few, while those of the others in his social world are very numerous. In this culture, it is evident that to be prepared to meet all exigencies of a changing social situation, no matter how limited it may be, could – and often does – require a great stream of plays and stories, advice columns and social how-to-do-it books. (p. 222)

Some fans become dissatisfied with mediated PSRs and seek to make contact with the actual persona. Fan mail is a measure of this, as well as fan clubs. The fan desires some sort of “real reciprocity which the para-social relation cannot provide” (p. 227). Cohen (2003), for example, argues that parasocial relationships lack the intensity of behavioral components of real-life relationships but exhibit many of the emotional aspects.

Horton & Wohl (1956) also suggested that people get to play roles in parasocial interactions that they do not normally get to play in real-life. Therefore, parasocial relationships offer a means of compensation for lack of some types (or even all types) of social interaction. Indeed, for most people, “the parasocial is complementary to normal social life … it provides a social milieu in which the everyday assumptions and understandings of primary group sociability are demonstrated and reaffirmed” (p. 223). Others who suffer from loneliness may seek out a sense of sociability through parasocial relationships with TV personae, and television producers are quite aware of this segment.

All text is copyrighted by Phillip Madison, so if you wanna use any of it, contact me first and/or use the following citation.

Madison, T.P. (2011). Horton & Wohl: The classic Lego. Phil's Dissertation Lego Box. Retrieved (DATE) from (LINK).

Script Theory

Nobody seems to know anything about script theory. It's elusive, but Honeycutt (2010) mentions that II theory has roots in it.

I am beginning to think that PSRs, like IIs, lead to creating scripts with which we use when dealing with other people. "Not that there's anything wrong with that."

But how do you measure how much scripting goes on within a person as a result of watching TV?

That's a helluva question to ask and an even helluver question to answer. But answer me this: how would these bad boys spark your imagination if you saw them quantified?

RQ1: Does television content become scripted through PSRs?
H1: PSRs function as a means of internal rehearsal.
H2: PSRs function to compensate for lack of interaction or IIs.
H3: PSRs function to help us maintain real-life relationships with real people.
H4: PSRs function as catharsis.
H5: PSRs produce scripts for dealing with conflict.
H6: PSRs function to help us better understand ourselves.

IIs and Parasocial Interactions: Tyco Blocks vs. Lego?

Scratch that last post. IIs and parasocial interactions are two different things (and still debated by some seminarians). IIs are imagined interactions, discussions with people in our heads with REAL people, with more of a practical purpose. Such purposes include rehearsal, learning about ourselves, planning, catharsis, and so forth. Parasocial interactions, however, may serve some of the same purposes, but are more related to fantasy. Specifically, they refer to interactions with people we don’t know or (sports legends, politicians) and particularly, fictional characters. What I claimed were interactions with the Stargate SG1 characters were actually parasocial interations rather than imagined interactions.

There may be a gap in the theoretical literature between the two, but my gut feeling tells me parasocial interactions have different functions, namely alleviating boredom, possibly managing mood, and a whole variety of things that aren’t necessarily geared to prepare us for conversation like IIs. Horton and Woll (1950something) got this line of research going and it’s on my reading list, but I haven’t looked into the functions and characteristics of such interactions yet. They are, however, on my comps reading list.

If nobody has done as thorough a job as Honeycutt (2003, 2010, etc.) has with IIs in developing theoretical axioms for parasocial relationships, then I might just have to consider it as a dissertation idea.