STUDY OF PARASOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS WITH VIDEOGAME CHARACTERS AND ASPECTS OF INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION IN VIDEOGAME USERS

The main purpose of the study is to explore the correlation between the intensity of parasocial relationships with videogame characters and aspects of interpersonal communication in videogame users. Additionally, psychometric properties of a new Multi-genre parasocial relationships inventory (MPRI) are tested. As a result of this test, the factor structure identical to the one in the pilot study has been reproduced, and is presented by two scales measuring the intensity of parasocial relationships – emotional symbiosis with a character and authority of a character. Both scales show adequate measures of internal reliability. Respondents with preferable videogame character have been sampled from videogaming communities, age ranging from 16 to 30 years old (M=20,34; SD=3,28). The group of videogame users aged from 16 to 19 years old showed significantly higher levels of dependent loneliness, emotional symbiosis and authority of a videogame character. Correlation analysis conducted independently for a 16—19 years old group showed no correlation between intensity of parasocial relationships and loneliness. Female videogame users showed significantly higher social anxiety, which was correlated to authority of a videogame character, compared to no correlation with parasocial relationship factors among male videogame users’ group. Future research could link these results to gender-specific features of interpersonal communication overall: the foundations for this hypothesis are discussed.