Parasocial Interaction and Identification: Social Change Processes for Effective Health Interventions

Two primary foci of health communication are discovering how people seek out and interpret health information and seeking ways to encourage people to make healthy choices. During the past couple of decades, health communication scholars and practitioners have focused increased attention on the role of celebrities in promoting health (Brown, Basil, & Bocarnea, 2003; Brown & deMatviuk, 2010). Lerner (2006) and Bae, Brown, & Kang (in press), for example, explain how news coverage of celebrities can draw people into public health issues. When celebrities have major health problems, like Earvin “Magic” Johnson’s contraction of HIV, Michael J. Fox’s battle with Parkinson’s disease, and Patrick Swayze’s fight with pancreatic cancer, the news media provide extensive coverage, exposing millions of people to important health information. Even health procedures, like Katie Couric’s screening for colon cancer, can provide the public with lifesaving information (Cram et al., 2003). When people are exposed to news regarding celebrity health issues, how are they affected by these stories? Can a celebrity “personalize” a health issue to the public? These two fundamental questions have been addressed by two powerful theories of social influence: parasocial interaction and identification. Horton and Wohl’s (1956) seminal work based on their observation of parasocial relationships between television personalities and audience members launched hundreds of studies during the next five decades,