Department of Psychology, College of Education, Psychology and Social Work, Flinders University, Bedford Park, SA, Australia.
Department of Counseling and Instructional Sciences, University of South Alabama, Alabama, USA.
Eat Weight Disord. 2024 Apr 22;29(1):28. doi: 10.1007/s40519-024-01658-4.
Although a number of investigations have been carried out on the marketing outcomes of parasocial relationships (PSR) with food influencers on social media, little attention has been paid to the potential contribution of these one-sided emotional bonds to followers' eating attitudes and habits. Drawing on the Parasocial Theory, the role of parasocial attachment with food influencers was investigated in predicting eating disorders, food addiction, and grazing. To increase the accuracy of PSR measurement, a brief self-report scale was developed to gauge social media users' feelings of mutual awareness, attention, and adjustment with their favorite food influencer at a distance through social media.
Participants were a convenience sample of 405 Iranian social media users (231women; M = 28.16, SD = 9.40), who followed a favorite food influencer on social media.
The 8-item Parasocial Relationship with Favorite Food Influencer Scale (PSRFFIS) revealed a unidimensional structure with excellent content and construct validity and internal consistency. Regarding gender differences, men showed stronger parasocial attachment to their favorite food influencers. Adjusting age, gender, and subjective social status as control variables, PSR with favorite food influencers partially contributed to the explanation of eating disorder symptom severity, food addiction, and grazing.
These findings show that PSR with favorite food influencers appears to be associated with followers' craving for food, which, in turn, may contribute to maladaptive eating habits. This highlights media-related factors, such as PSR with food influencers, as potential drivers of dysfunctional eating habits in the digital age, particularly in countries like Iran where disordered eating is prevalent.
Level V-based on cross-sectional data (correlational study; scale development).
尽管已经有许多研究调查了社交媒体上食品影响者的准社会关系（PSR）对营销结果的影响，但很少关注这些单方面情感联系对追随者饮食态度和习惯的潜在贡献。本研究以准社会理论为基础，考察了与食品影响者的准社会依恋在预测饮食障碍、食物成瘾和放牧行为方面的作用。为了提高 PSR 测量的准确性，开发了一个简短的自我报告量表，通过社交媒体来衡量社交媒体用户与他们最喜欢的食品影响者之间的相互感知、关注和调整的感觉。
参与者是 405 名伊朗社交媒体用户（231 名女性；M = 28.16，SD = 9.40）的便利样本，他们在社交媒体上关注了自己喜欢的食品影响者。
8 项准社会关系与最喜欢的食品影响者量表（PSRFFIS）显示出单一维度结构，具有良好的内容和结构效度以及内部一致性。关于性别差异，男性对自己喜欢的食品影响者表现出更强的准社会依恋。调整年龄、性别和主观社会地位作为控制变量，与最喜欢的食品影响者的 PSR 部分解释了饮食障碍症状严重程度、食物成瘾和放牧行为。
这些发现表明，与最喜欢的食品影响者的 PSR 似乎与追随者对食物的渴望有关，而这种渴望反过来又可能导致不良的饮食习惯。这突出了媒体相关因素，如与食品影响者的 PSR，作为数字时代功能失调的饮食习惯的潜在驱动因素，特别是在像伊朗这样饮食失调普遍存在的国家。
基于横断面数据的五级（相关性研究；量表开发）。
