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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:92523 |
| Date | 08 July 2024 |
| Creators | Lutz, Sarah, Schneider, Frank M., Reich, Sabine, Schimmel, Michelle, Oechler, Hannah, Beinlich, Laura |
| Contributors | Technische Universität Chemnitz, International Communication Association (ICA) |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| Source Sets | Hochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion, doc-type:article, info:eu-repo/semantics/article, doc-type:Text |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | 1468-2958, 10.1093/hcr/hqae009 |
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