Women form parasocial relationships with virtual influencers in the same way they do with human creators, a new study claims.
Researchers from the Netherlands conducted an experiment to investigate whether the intensity and stage progression of parasocial relationships (one-sided connections) differed between human and virtual influencers.
They paired 185 young adult women with either a human or an AI-generated creator (both of which were also women). The influencers had the same profiles, but the researchers used the ‘Beauty Cartoon’ Snapchat lens to modify the photos of the virtual creator. They also included hashtags such as #virtualinfluencer and #AI influencer for the AI group.
The participants interacted with a post or story by the creator every day over the course of a month, and answered questions about the development of their connection five times during that period.
According to established theory, social media users go through four stages when establishing parasocial relationships: initiation (where users form their first impressions), experimentation (where users seek more information), intensification (where users increase their media consumption and experience stronger connections), and integration (where the influencers become a part of users’ identities and fandoms are created).
The researchers hypothesised that people would be more likely to reach the advanced stages of parasocial relationships when interacting with humans, rather than virtual influencers, but the findings suggested otherwise.
Participants progressed through the four stages in similar ways, regardless of whether they were paired with a human or AI influencer. These results, the authors explain, ‘challenge the assumption that the human-likeness of a media character is a decisive factor in parasocial relationship formation and progression’.
The findings suggest that consistency in content, perceived relatability, and narrative ‘may be more influential than whether the influencer is human or artificially created’.
The experiment also looked at how participants experienced parasocial breakup, and the researchers expected to find that the breakup would be ‘more intense’ for the social media users following human influencers.
To test their hypothesis, they presented participants with a questionnaire on the last day of the experiment and then showed them an influencer post. After doing this, they informed them that this was the last post they would see and asked them to share how they felt. Once again, they found ‘no significant difference’ in the breakup intensity that participants reported.
These findings come as virtual influencers are becoming more common on social media platforms. However, the World Federation of Advertising conducted research earlier this year and found that brands are still wary of using AI influencers, with 96% of those surveyed citing concerns around consumer trust and acceptance.
The authors explain that they chose to conduct a female-only study as previous research showed people are more likely to bond with media figures of the same gender. They also claim that this approach reduces the risk of conflating ‘amicable and romantic parasocial dynamics’, although it does limit the generalisability of the findings.
Featured image: AI influencer imma and Japanese model Emi Suzuki / @imma.gram on Instagram