Comparison of Source Credibility and Parasocial Breakup in High and Low Levels of Adolescents’ Parasocial Interaction with their Favorite Celebrities

Parasocial interaction is a concept used to explain how fans interact with celebrities. Meanwhile, source credibility and parasocial breakup can be different in distinct levels of parasocial interaction. In this causal-comparative study, the statistical population of the study consisted of high school students in district one of Rasht city during the academic year 2019-2020. Among them, 200 male and female students were selected by convenience sampling method. In order to collect data, the Celebrity Parasocial Interaction Scale (Bocarnea & Brown, 2007), Source Credibility Scale (Ohanian, 1990), and Parasocial Breakup Scale (Cohen, 2003) were used. Data were analyzed by SPSS24 software using multivariate analysis of variance. The results indicate adolescents with high level of parasocial interaction with their favorite celebrities got higher scores in source credibility and parasocial breakup compared to adolescents with low level of parasocial interaction with their favorite celebrities (p < 0/01). According to the results, at high levels of parasocial interaction, adolescents place a high value on their favorite celebrities and adolescents also experience more post breakup feelings and behaviors such as seeking information and discomfort in response to breakup. The present study highlights the importance of source credibility and parasocial breakup in development and maintain of parasocial interaction with favorite celebrity.