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Episode: Is It Weird for Adults to Have Imaginary Friends? (Replay)

Author: Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher
Duration: 00:36:27

Episode Shownotes

Why does listening to No Stupid Questions feel like you’re hanging out with your best friends? Why did the whole world take it personally when Princess Diana died? And how do “parasocial relationships” affect your mental health? SOURCES:Bradley Bond, professor of communication studies at the University of San Diego.John Cacioppo,

professor of psychology at the University of Chicago.Joe Cobbs, professor of marketing at Northern Kentucky University.Nick Epley, professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago.Katy Milkman, professor of operations, information, and decisions at the University of Pennsylvania.Emily Oster, professor of economics at Brown University.Anuj Shah, professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago. RESOURCES:"Knowledge About Others Reduces One’s Own Sense of Anonymity," by Anuj K. Shah and Michael LaForest (Nature, 2022)."Tragic but True: How Podcasters Replaced Our Real Friends," by Rachel Aroesti (The Guardian, 2021)."The Development and Influence of Parasocial Relationships With Television Characters: A Longitudinal Experimental Test of Prejudice Reduction Through Parasocial Contact," by Bradley J. Bond (Communication Research, 2020)."A Mind like Mine: The Exceptionally Ordinary Underpinnings of Anthropomorphism," by Nicholas Epley (Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 2018)."Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance," by Angela Duckworth (TED, 2013)."How Soap Operas Changed the World," by Stephanie Hegarty (BBC, 2012)."The Power of TV: Cable Television and Women's Status in India," by Robert Jensen and Emily Oster (The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2009). EXTRAS:"Can A.I. Companions Replace Human Connection?" by No Stupid Questions (2024)."Rivalry," by Tell Me Something I Don't Know (2017).Behavior Change for Good Initiative.Everything Is Alive.The Know Rivalry Project.

Full Transcript

00:00:04 Speaker_05
Hi, NSQ listeners. If you've been following us for a while, you know that Stephen Dubner used to co-host the show. We're off this week, so we thought you might enjoy this classic episode in which he and Angela discuss parasocial relationships.

00:00:18 Speaker_05
We'll be back next week with a brand new episode featuring Mike and Angela. But first, here's a message from Stephen.

00:00:32 Speaker_03
Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner from Freakonomics Radio, and I am busting into this No Stupid Questions episode to tell you about two upcoming Freakonomics Radio live shows in San Francisco on January 3rd and in Los Angeles on February 13th.

00:00:48 Speaker_03
But for tickets, go to freakonomics.com slash live shows, one word. I am told that tickets are going fast, so you might want to do this soon. Again, that is freakonomics.com slash live shows, January 3rd in San Francisco, February 13th in L.A.

00:01:06 Speaker_03
I'll be there, and I hope you will, too. Thanks.

00:01:13 Speaker_06
You know me, Steven. I'm like, let's hug. Let's take a selfie. I'm Angela Duckworth.

00:01:20 Speaker_03
I'm Steven Dubner. And you're listening to No Stupid Questions.

00:01:25 Speaker_05
Today on the show, what does it mean to be friends with someone who has no idea that you exist?

00:01:31 Speaker_06
Instead of having a conversation with an actual friend, I'll just listen to Steven and Angela have a conversation with each other.

00:01:48 Speaker_03
Angela, a listener named Caitlin writes to say that the highlight of her day is listening to this podcast on her walks. She writes, it feels like hanging out with close friends. Oh, I was going to ask for your response. Your response was aww.

00:02:03 Speaker_03
That's the opposite of my response, but OK.

00:02:05 Speaker_06
Yours is ew. No, Caitlin, just so you know, aww.

00:02:11 Speaker_03
She continues, my question is, how useful are these parasocial relationships in maintaining mental health?

00:02:19 Speaker_03
So Angie, before I continue reading the email, I think I understand this word from context, but can you define a word I'd never heard before, parasocial?

00:02:28 Speaker_06
I think the idea of a parasocial relationship is that it's an asymmetric relationship. It's one sided. So Caitlin might feel like she's hanging out with us, but we do not feel like nor do we in any sense hang out with her.

00:02:45 Speaker_03
Well, right now we are.

00:02:47 Speaker_06
Well, except for now. This is as good as it gets, Caitlin.

00:02:51 Speaker_03
So she says, how useful are these relationships? And then she continues, or will my almost daily rewatching of Friends and rereading of Harry Potter hinder my ability to form, quote, normal relationships in the long run? Also, she writes,

00:03:08 Speaker_03
What does the research say about our friendships and emotional dependency with AI, artificial intelligence? Did they count as parasocial relationships? I think of the movie Her. Did you ever see Her, Angie?

00:03:18 Speaker_06
I didn't. Is that the one where Scarlett Johansson plays like the equivalent of Alexa or something?

00:03:24 Speaker_03
Yes, exactly.

00:03:25 Speaker_06
Sorry to, by the way, turn on a number of devices just then. A-L-E-X-A.

00:03:31 Speaker_03
I've noticed that I can't have a conversation around S-I-R-I anymore if I'm going to ever say the word S-E-R-I-O-U-S-L-Y. So S-I-R-I, if you're listening, it's a problem. We need to work it out. But that's not what Caitlin's asking about.

00:03:52 Speaker_03
Does a relationship with, let's say, your A-L-E-X-A or S-I-R-I count as a parasocial relationship? She writes, I don't feel anything about Alexa or Siri, but perhaps a much more advanced robot of the future could be a friend.

00:04:10 Speaker_03
So Angela, in response to Caitlin's email, what does the research say about parasocial relationships?

00:04:17 Speaker_06
I remember a talk that one of my favorite researchers, Anuj Shah, he's at University of Chicago in the Booth School of Business, and he's a professor of behavioral science.

00:04:27 Speaker_06
And he is part of Behavior Change for Good, which, as you know, is a consortium of behavioral scientists that Katie Milkman and I gather to do studies together.

00:04:36 Speaker_06
But in this particular conversation, Anuj was presenting new work, which was inspired by his teaching during the pandemic. What Anuj said is that when you are teaching on Zoom,

00:04:48 Speaker_06
You are in your living room or in your kitchen, and life is going on in the background. And he observed of his students that because they could now see some of his day-to-day life, they had this sense that he reciprocally knew them.

00:05:05 Speaker_06
In other words, there was this kind of automatic reciprocal, like, well, since I know a lot about you, you must know a lot about me. And he found this so interesting, he decided to do research on it.

00:05:19 Speaker_06
It was just published this year in Nature, which is arguably the top scientific journal. And the title of his paper is Knowledge About Others Reduces One's Own Sense of Anonymity.

00:05:31 Speaker_03
Run that past me again. I like that, but I need to process it.

00:05:34 Speaker_06
Yeah, it's a lot. And I want to unpack it a little bit. But the title is Knowledge About Others Reduces One's Own Sense of Anonymity. And I should say that Anoush did this in collaboration with a postdoc named Michael LaForest.

00:05:50 Speaker_06
They say social ties often seem symmetric, but they need not be. For example, a person might know a stranger better than the stranger knows them. Here we show that when people know more about others, they think others know more about them.

00:06:06 Speaker_06
Across nine laboratory experiments, when participants learned more about a stranger, they felt as if the stranger also knew them better. As a result, participants were more honest around known strangers.

00:06:18 Speaker_06
We tested this further with a field experiment in New York City, in which we provided residents with mundane information about neighborhood police officers.

00:06:28 Speaker_06
We found that the intervention shifted residents' perceptions of officers' knowledge of legal activity, and it may even have reduced crime.

00:06:37 Speaker_06
It appears that our sense of anonymity depends not only on what people know about us, but also on what we know about them.

00:06:45 Speaker_06
So, Stephen, getting back to parasocial relationships, I think one of the reasons why somebody listening to a podcast like ours or watching Friends or, you know, Cheers, which is something I watched a lot growing up, is that when we feel like we know a lot about

00:07:02 Speaker_06
Norm, or about Seinfeld, or about Steven, or about Angela, we have this almost reflexive assumption that this is a two-way relationship.

00:07:12 Speaker_06
And I think it's probably because in most of human history, relationships were not possible in this parasocial sense. Relationships were just relationships.

00:07:22 Speaker_03
So this is a whole new dynamic that the human instrument is getting accustomed to now.

00:07:28 Speaker_06
Well, I guess you could go back to times where, say, for example, there was a royal family that everyone gossiped about. Clearly, there is an asymmetry there, right?

00:07:38 Speaker_06
Because people are not talking about your typical villager, but it's so clear that they're the royal family.

00:07:44 Speaker_03
The demarcation.

00:07:45 Speaker_06
Whereas I think one of the features of Friends or Cheers or Seinfeld or a podcast, including ours, is that we're not at a different level, right? Well, I am.

00:07:55 Speaker_03
Let's be clear.

00:07:57 Speaker_06
Except for King Stephen and Queen Angela. But the point is, I think it's voluntary vulnerability and intimacy in a way that you don't think that the queen and king did 500 years ago. So it's unprecedented, maybe.

00:08:10 Speaker_03
I thought of an example that's very different from this, but it's intriguing to me, which is about the difference in the dynamic. We were doing a live show in Chicago once. And I want to say that this guy was an economist at a university in Indiana.

00:08:26 Speaker_03
Forgive all the details I'm getting wrong here. But his research was about what I guess you would call asymmetric sports rivalries. And he'd actually measured very intensely how these asymmetries played out.

00:08:38 Speaker_03
So for instance, Notre Dame is a big and famous and historically successful sports program, especially with football. And then they have all these other teams that they've played for years and years and years and years and years.

00:08:50 Speaker_03
And those schools, let's say Boston College for instance, Boston College considers Notre Dame its number one rival. Notre Dame considers Boston College its number, I don't know, 37 rival.

00:09:03 Speaker_03
That's what I got to thinking about when you were telling me about parasocial relationships generally.

00:09:08 Speaker_03
But that's a little bit easier to understand because it sounds as though with the parasocial relationships, especially if they're coming from media, let's say it's fiction, like Friends, or nonfiction, like a podcast,

00:09:21 Speaker_03
that you really do feel you form a relationship with these people. Are you saying, however, that the listener or the viewer will really cross the line and really think that the relationship is beyond virtual?

00:09:39 Speaker_06
I don't know that people think, oh my gosh, I thought we were best friends. I think it's just that there is something of a reflexive like, well, if I know a lot about you, then you must know a lot about me.

00:09:52 Speaker_06
That doesn't necessarily mean that people are delusional.

00:09:54 Speaker_03
Well, doesn't it sound borderline delusional? Like, why would I think that you would know a lot about me?

00:10:00 Speaker_06
Yeah, it's on a continuum, I guess you could argue. Maybe we're just using a heuristic. Generally, when I know a lot about you, you know a lot about me. But I remember when Princess Diana died and there was such an outpouring of grief around the world.

00:10:15 Speaker_06
Do you remember when that happened and there was just like piles of flowers and people who actually felt genuinely sad for days or more?

00:10:25 Speaker_03
I'll be honest with you. I mean, this may make me sound more like a robot than a human. I just didn't get it. I didn't understand why people cared so much.

00:10:32 Speaker_06
Same. I was like, holy schmoly. What is going on with these people who are grieving like it were a brother or a sister? But maybe just going back to this new research.

00:10:43 Speaker_06
that typically when we know a lot about somebody, we have a lot of affection for them, typically it's reciprocated. And so there is kind of like a hijacking of your normal relationship responses. I don't know about the devices.

00:10:57 Speaker_06
I think it's different to talk about your A-L-E-X-A or your S-I-R-I.

00:11:02 Speaker_03
There is a podcast called Everything is Alive, hosted by Ian Chileg. It's scripted and it's really funny. He interviews inanimate objects and he hires really good actors or comics.

00:11:16 Speaker_06
Oh, I've heard of this. He can interview like a potato or something.

00:11:19 Speaker_03
Exactly. A sock, a vending machine. There's one, he interviews a baby's pacifier and it becomes pretty lewd pretty quickly because the voice says, just imagine you're putting me in your mouth and rolling your tongue around my contours.

00:11:35 Speaker_06
There was this research that Nick Epley, who's at University of Chicago, he's a psychologist. He has worked on this kind of anthropomorphism, when we attribute human characteristics to inanimate objects.

00:11:51 Speaker_06
It was also work in collaboration with John Cacioppo. And John Cacioppo, you may know, was a psychologist who was really like the world authority on the psychology of loneliness. So both of them were interested in this question.

00:12:02 Speaker_06
I'm thinking about a paper that Nick published only a few years ago. Basically, what his research shows is that human beings do anthropomorphize. We do start to interact with our car or our cell phone in a way that is like a relationship.

00:12:21 Speaker_06
But what Nick wants to conclude is that human beings are, I do remember this phrase, relentlessly social. In other words, we have such a deep need to interact with other people that we will even do it with non-people.

00:12:37 Speaker_03
Let me take a step back and just ask you, if you had to make two lists about intense parasocial relationships, the upsides and downsides, give me a few.

00:12:49 Speaker_06
The upsides and downsides of parasocial relationships. Let me first talk about the downsides because in a way those should be the more obvious ones.

00:12:58 Speaker_06
You know, I see how much time people are spending watching Netflix or Food Network and they're on their screens. They're not only having parasocial relationships, but all of life seems to be more vicarious. than it used to be.

00:13:12 Speaker_06
Like, there was a time when people bought Julia Child's cookbook and made coq au vin for the first time. Oh my gosh, this is how French people eat chicken. It's amazing. I can't believe it takes a whole bottle of wine.

00:13:23 Speaker_06
I spent all day cooking, but then we had this amazing dinner party. That's life. right? But now you could just watch somebody else cook cacovin on Food Network while you sit on the couch with your bag of Doritos.

00:13:36 Speaker_06
I know that sounds really judgy, but I feel like so much of life is not going out for the walk yourself and seeing nature, but instead watching a nature documentary, you know, not cooking the cacovin yourself, but watching somebody else cook it.

00:13:49 Speaker_06
And I hope That's not what this podcast becomes. It's like instead of actually having a conversation with an actual friend, I'll just listen to Steven and Angela have a conversation with each other.

00:14:00 Speaker_03
I hear you. You do sound a little bit judgy. I know. I sounded very judgy. But that's OK. Look, I appreciate the candor. And I definitely identify with those instincts.

00:14:11 Speaker_03
But I also identify maybe a little bit more with the general economist instinct versus the general psychologist instinct, which is to say, you know what, preferences are personal and they shift over time.

00:14:23 Speaker_03
And they're also not necessarily for me to decide.

00:14:29 Speaker_06
Like what's good or what's bad.

00:14:30 Speaker_03
Yeah. And also, can I just say I made Coco Van once and it was a pain in the neck.

00:14:35 Speaker_06
I know. It really does take a whole bottle of burgundy wine, too, which is really expensive.

00:14:39 Speaker_03
You should just drink it. You just order KFC and drink the bottle of wine. You'll be much happier.

00:14:44 Speaker_06
I don't even like Coco Van.

00:14:45 Speaker_03
So for anybody that's been persuaded somehow by Angela evangelizing for making CoCoVent, I'm just saying, in this one rare case, you're never wrong, Angie. In this one case, she's wrong.

00:14:56 Speaker_06
Just watch Emeril Lagasse make it.

00:14:58 Speaker_03
Order KFC, drink the wine, you'll be much better off. Anyway, you were saying you wish people would take nature walks and make CoCoVent. OK, so that's the downside of intense parasocial relationship is they may encourage you to substitute

00:15:12 Speaker_06
It's displacing actual life. Faux life is not life. And faux relationships are not relationships.

00:15:19 Speaker_03
I don't think anyone sensible would argue against that. However, can you imagine that there are pretty strong positive elements of parasocial relationships?

00:15:28 Speaker_03
I think back to research done by Emily Oster, who's an economist now at Brown, about women in India who got access for the first time to television and how that changed their status in their families and society.

00:15:45 Speaker_03
because they were able to see that women in other places were actually treated pretty well and went to college and had jobs.

00:15:51 Speaker_03
And so if you happen to be in a family or a town where women were treated much worse than that, you could start to change your idea of how you should be treated.

00:16:01 Speaker_06
But that's not parasocial relationships. That's just I got to see another way of life. How is that having an asymmetric like I felt like we were friends?

00:16:10 Speaker_03
I see your point, but I could imagine that if I'm watching that TV show, I could think, oh, this person in a lot of ways is a lot like me and I like her a great deal and I would like to be like her.

00:16:22 Speaker_03
I should probably try to be more like her because then we could be closer.

00:16:26 Speaker_06
This also happened in Mexico, where they had a soap opera that was very much about showing people deliberately that you, even if you're poor, could learn to read a book and so forth.

00:16:36 Speaker_06
But I think the research there did not conclude that it was all working on the active ingredient of parasocial relationships where people feel like they're friends with the protagonist of the soap opera, but more just modeling.

00:16:47 Speaker_06
That role model gives you the technical term is self-efficacy, but the lay term would be confidence, right? Like you see somebody do something and you can imagine yourself doing it. But I don't think that's parasocial.

00:16:58 Speaker_03
Okay, I'm not giving up yet. So you're saying that doesn't really count. But let's imagine that I am an Archie Bunker type. I'm an old bigot.

00:17:08 Speaker_03
And for those who are too young to know Archie Bunker, he was the lead character in a TV show called All in the Family. So imagine you're that kind of person, but you can fill in the blank.

00:17:18 Speaker_03
It can be any gender, any race, any social strata you want, who thinks that most people who are not like them are kind of rotten people. And then I start watching a TV show like, I don't know, Modern Family.

00:17:30 Speaker_06
I love Modern Family.

00:17:32 Speaker_03
So I've actually watched an episode of Modern Family. Just one? I don't watch a lot of TV is my problem. You know why I watched it is because Freakonomics was on it. It was in the first season.

00:17:42 Speaker_06
Wait, Freakonomics was mentioned? You had a cameo?

00:17:44 Speaker_03
Who was the super smart daughter?

00:17:47 Speaker_06
Oh, right. She's supposed to be like the nerdy one. Gosh, I can't remember.

00:17:51 Speaker_03
I think they were at a swimming pool and everybody's jumping around, having fun. And she's sitting by the pool reading freaking comics.

00:17:57 Speaker_06
Oh, my gosh. That's so cool, Steven.

00:17:59 Speaker_03
Yeah. We're in the top like 58 of nerd accoutrements in the history of nerd accoutrements.

00:18:06 Speaker_06
But your point was about modern family.

00:18:08 Speaker_03
Yeah. Imagine there's a real life Archie Bunker type and then they watch a TV show that is created and performed by these people who are really, really, really good at making everyone likable and interesting.

00:18:22 Speaker_03
So I'm watching all these different characters who are nothing like me in any way. These are people I would never intentionally want to socialize with, I would never invite them to my house, etc. But now, gosh, I really like them.

00:18:36 Speaker_03
That one's really funny. That one's really smart. That one's really sassy. Couldn't you imagine that sort of parasocial-ish relationship? And maybe it's not exactly what we're talking about, but don't you think that could serve a really useful function?

00:18:49 Speaker_06
Yes, I do. I think that's plausible. And I'm now looking at this article called The Development and Influence of Parasocial Relationships with Television Characters. A Longitudinal Experimental Test of Prejudice Reduction Through Parasocial Contact.

00:19:06 Speaker_06
So this is basically your idea, yes? And it's by one Bradley Bond at University of San Diego.

00:19:12 Speaker_03
I love Bradley Bond.

00:19:14 Speaker_06
fun. Bradley Bond loves you, Steven, I'm sure. But essentially, this is a 10-week study, and it involves a sample of heterosexual participants who watch a television series with fictional characters who are gay.

00:19:30 Speaker_06
And the question is, what happens to your attitudes as you watch over the course of two months? And the bottom line conclusion is, and I quote, that audiences can develop socio-emotional bonds

00:19:42 Speaker_06
with out-group television characters, out-group meaning not in the main group, that can influence attitudes and behaviors much the same as direct interpersonal intergroup contact.

00:19:54 Speaker_06
That's some empirical support for your intuition that maybe feeling like we are friends with people that don't actually know us, that could be used for good.

00:20:12 Speaker_05
Still to come on No Stupid Questions, Angela shares a parasocial relationship of her own.

00:20:18 Speaker_06
I listen to you all the time. I watch documentaries about you. I know so much that there has to be something on the other side.

00:20:31 Speaker_05
Before we return to Stephen and Angela's conversation about parasocial relationships, let's hear some of your thoughts on the subject. We asked listeners to let us know how parasocial relationships have shaped their lives. Here's what you said.

00:20:45 Speaker_04
Hi, I'm in a one-sided relationship with Korean music group BTS. I first became a BTS fan when my sister and her family moved to South Korea at the end of 2019.

00:20:57 Speaker_04
Initially, it was a way for me to connect with my nephews and nieces at a distance, but before long, I feel like I've really become a true fan, part of the BTS ARMY. We know their personalities, their likes and dislikes.

00:21:12 Speaker_04
I think it's been a way for me to really cope with being away from my family over the last two years of COVID. I guess some people might think it's embarrassing, but BTS are me all the way.

00:21:24 Speaker_01
Hi Angela and Steven. This is Russell Singer. As a much younger graduate student studying transportation systems, I often found myself having imaginary conversations with Elon Musk to vet my ideas and plan my presentations.

00:21:38 Speaker_01
At the time, I looked up to him deeply for his engineering acumen and ability to accomplish things that many tried but no one was able.

00:21:45 Speaker_01
In more recent days, I've lost a modicum of respect for him based on certain comments and activities that he's engaged in.

00:21:52 Speaker_01
I still sometimes have conversations with him in my head, but they tend to take on a more morally superior tone and be far less deferential.

00:22:01 Speaker_02
For several years now, I have had a lovely one-sided relationship with singer-songwriter Jason Isbell, who shows up with some regularity in my dreams. My husband and 20-something children think it's hysterical.

00:22:12 Speaker_02
They'll be like, oh, mom had one of her Jason dreams again. They can laugh. These sporadic dreams make me feel connected to someone whose work I love and whose music makes me happy and inspired.

00:22:22 Speaker_05
That was, respectively, Sarah Larios, Russell Singer, and Colleen Massey. Thanks to them and to everyone who sent us their thoughts. Now, back to Stephen and Angela's conversation about how modern media has created asymmetric relationships.

00:22:41 Speaker_06
I sometimes run into people who are strangers to me, but they stop me and they say, oh, are you Angela Duckworth? This may be because of our podcast.

00:22:50 Speaker_06
It may also be because I happen to give a TED Talk that many, many children have been forced to watch by their parents.

00:22:56 Speaker_03
What's the topic of this TED Talk?

00:22:59 Speaker_06
It's G.R.I.T. But the point is, oftentimes in these very short interactions with strangers, there is, to me, it seems like a familiarity. It's like, oh, my gosh, are you Angela? And then I say, yes.

00:23:12 Speaker_06
Then you have immediately vaulted forward into a level of intimacy that is a little fast.

00:23:21 Speaker_03
And how does that make you feel?

00:23:23 Speaker_06
It generally makes me feel actually very happy. You know me, Steven. I'm like, let's hug. Let's take a selfie. I'm flattered. I'm happy to race forward toward best friendship. But I'm guessing that you would not like it.

00:23:38 Speaker_03
It's a matter of degrees. I'm always honored and flattered when someone says they like me. I mean, who doesn't like to be liked or even acknowledged?

00:23:47 Speaker_03
The thing about you though, I don't think it's so much about the parasocial relationship making you happy. I think you're just pathologically happy and that nothing can really disrupt

00:24:00 Speaker_06
But I do think there's probably some parasocial element. Look, let me turn the tables here. I know a lot about Taylor Swift. I have listened to Taylor Swift. I've gone to many Taylor Swift concerts.

00:24:10 Speaker_06
I feel like I've known Taylor since she was only a mini megastar. This is now going back like 12 years, 15 years.

00:24:21 Speaker_06
And so when Taylor would put her hands together and make it heart and look meaningfully out into the audience of tens of thousands of people, I feel like I experienced on the flip side what it felt like because

00:24:33 Speaker_06
Look, I didn't delude myself into thinking that we were best friends, or that she would ever take my phone call, or that she even knew who I was, but there was a sense that if I know so much about you, and if I listen to you all the time, I hear your voice in my house, I watch documentaries about you, and I know so much that there has to be something on the other side.

00:24:52 Speaker_06
It's not conscious, but it is a feeling of intimacy, and maybe for some people, it plays a bigger role than for others.

00:25:00 Speaker_03
Hang on a second, I'm getting a text here. Oh, it's from Taylor. We're friends. She says, tell Angie I will hang with her anytime. T.S.

00:25:12 Speaker_06
You know, Steven, this is cruel.

00:25:14 Speaker_03
OK, so here's the thing. Caitlin, who wrote this email, she said that when she listens to us, quote, it feels like hanging out with my close friends.

00:25:22 Speaker_03
And I found this piece from The Guardian last year titled Tragic But True, How Podcasters Replaced Our Real Friends. This is by Rachel Oresti. She wrote, some of my friends have no idea I even exist.

00:25:37 Speaker_03
These are people I know intimately, extensively, profoundly. I know what they had for dinner last night, the petty arguments they have at home, their obsessions, their insecurities, their fears, what time they wake up in the morning.

00:25:50 Speaker_03
I think if she listened to this show, she'd probably know all that about us. She said, I want to hear it all.

00:25:55 Speaker_03
If this is beginning to sound slightly alarming, I should point out that they tell me all these things and try to make me laugh in the process. I think of podcasters as my friends and I am not alone." She writes it.

00:26:08 Speaker_03
COVID-19 has accelerated the podcaster friend trend. But you know, I've had a conversation in the past with Rebecca, our producer, who I think has had similar-ish experience with podcasters becoming very important to her. Rebecca, are you hearing us?

00:26:27 Speaker_05
Hi. Yes, I hear you. I'm right here.

00:26:30 Speaker_03
Rebecca, is that true?

00:26:32 Speaker_05
That's definitely true. I would say that parasocial relationships have been very positive for my mental health in the past. Wait, your relationship with people who you're listening to on podcasts? Yeah.

00:26:43 Speaker_05
So I think the strongest relationships like this that I built were when I was living in England. I was doing my junior year abroad at Oxford, the 2008-2009 academic year. And I went there. I was so excited.

00:26:57 Speaker_05
I thought I was going to have this amazing experience and meet all of these wonderful British academic friends. But I had a lot of difficulty making friends there, and I was really lonely.

00:27:07 Speaker_05
It was a lot of just sitting in my room or in one of the libraries and writing and researching all day. And the days were short and dark. I ended up feeling really just sad and empty and tired.

00:27:20 Speaker_05
Later, I would find out that what I was experiencing was clinical depression.

00:27:24 Speaker_03
Oh, I thought you were going to say what I was experiencing was England.

00:27:26 Speaker_05
Oh, yeah. Sort of hand in hand, don't they? But one of the things that would help me was that I would take these really long walks with podcasts. So I would listen to Fresh Air with Terry Gross and Radio Lab and the Savage Love cast.

00:27:41 Speaker_05
And so I felt really connected to the hosts of these shows. You know, they're in your headphones, so it feels like they're talking to you.

00:27:48 Speaker_03
Yeah.

00:27:49 Speaker_05
And I didn't really have friends at Oxford. So it felt like, oh, I have these American voices in my head. We share a similar sense of the world. I felt like if we met up, they would want to be my friends. We had this similar sensibility, sense of humor.

00:28:04 Speaker_05
It was just really a relief. And laughter was a relief because I didn't laugh that off. So I think it really got me through the pain and loneliness of that year. And then it was so funny.

00:28:14 Speaker_05
I felt particularly attached to Jad Abumrad, the former host of Radiolab. And when I got my first internship at WNYC, I think in 2010 or 2011, I was walking down the hall and I saw him coming toward me.

00:28:29 Speaker_05
And my instinct was immediately like, oh, that's my friend. That's my friend, Jad. And so I was like, oh, my gosh, hey, Jad. It was so embarrassing and he was like, oh, sorry. Hi. Do I know you? See, that's what I mean, Steven.

00:28:41 Speaker_05
And then I had to be like, oh my gosh, no, you do not know him.

00:28:45 Speaker_03
So did you eventually revert back to humans or is this still a major part of your, you know, friend circle?

00:28:53 Speaker_05
I mean, podcasts are still a major part of my friend circle, but things got better at Oxford. The days started getting longer and it was spring and I met other human beings eventually.

00:29:06 Speaker_05
I didn't have to solely rely on my imaginary friends as my source of socialization.

00:29:14 Speaker_03
I'm just curious to know, Angie, when you hear that story, that sounds like Rebecca kind of hacked parasocial relationships to serve as a really useful tool to get over a tough time.

00:29:25 Speaker_06
Took a bug and turned it into a feature. This is not at all kind of like, oh my gosh, life is becoming too vicarious.

00:29:33 Speaker_03
So when we're talking about parasocial relationships, where do imaginary friends fall? And I'm not talking about for adults. I'm really thinking about children.

00:29:42 Speaker_06
Not all children have imaginary friends, but many, many children have imaginary friends for actually extended periods.

00:29:49 Speaker_03
this great group of friends, they were actually a team that I called the Nothings. And this was whenever I was playing some game or sport, I would make them my opponent.

00:29:59 Speaker_03
And I would say they were my opponent in 95% of the games I played as a kid, because I was the youngest in a big family, but I was youngest by quite a bit. So I was on my own a lot.

00:30:08 Speaker_03
And this team, the Nothings, they were like, you remember the Harlem Globetrotters and the Washington Generals?

00:30:14 Speaker_06
I only remember the Harlem Globetrotters. I do not remember the Washington Generals.

00:30:18 Speaker_03
The Washington Generals were the team they always beat. And these were amazingly good basketball players, but they always lost to the Harlem Globetrotters. So the nothings were like the Washington Generals in my universe.

00:30:30 Speaker_03
I didn't think about them as individuals, but they were a strong presence in my mind. And I know that many, many, many children, including my own kids, have had something like that.

00:30:41 Speaker_03
Doesn't that seem like a really useful way to start to think about the contours of humankind and who we're friends with, who extends beyond our imagination and so on?

00:30:53 Speaker_06
What you're saying, I think, Stephen, is that maybe it is not a pathological thing to kind of practice relationships, either through an imaginary friend when you're a little kid or depressed in England and you're engaging in a para relationship.

00:31:09 Speaker_06
And para, I think the root word means beside, parallel, paranormal, parasocial relationships. But I think it's possibly that the answer is if.

00:31:20 Speaker_03
The answer is if.

00:31:21 Speaker_06
Yeah, but let me say more.

00:31:23 Speaker_03
Oh, sorry. No, I love the beginning of that sentence. I just got impatient to hear the rest of it.

00:31:27 Speaker_06
So basically, the idea is Caitlin's question is how useful are parasocial relationships in maintaining mental health? They can be useful if you are practicing certain things like maybe children are doing with imaginary friends.

00:31:41 Speaker_06
You are using this opportunity to on ramp. onto different ways of thinking.

00:31:47 Speaker_06
But I think the if also cuts the other way, which is like, if all you're doing is having parasocial relationships and no social relationships, and if everything you're doing is always at the level of imagination or vicarious experience, that's where I start to be my cranky middle-aged self.

00:32:09 Speaker_03
I think that is a lovely way of summarizing. And to Caitlin, I would say, when you write that it feels like you're hanging out with your close friends when you listen to us, to that, I would say, you are wrong. We are not your friends, Caitlin.

00:32:24 Speaker_03
But, Caitlin, we love you, nonetheless.

00:32:30 Speaker_06
Great to end on a completely mixed signal, Stephen. Well done. Caitlin, you can come over. We'll have a glass of wine.

00:32:40 Speaker_05
Coming up after the break, a fact check of today's conversation, and a message from this week's question asker. No Stupid Questions is produced by me, Rebecca Lee Douglas.

00:32:58 Speaker_05
Before we move on to the fact check, we'd like to give listener Caitlin the last word.

00:33:02 Speaker_00
Thank you for answering my question. Stephen, I don't know what you look like, so you're totally safe from me going up to you in real life and badgering you. And Angela, yes to the wine.

00:33:13 Speaker_00
I'm happy to report that I'm going to hang out with my friends later, and I'll try not to live my life through a screen. Love you both.

00:33:21 Speaker_05
And now, here's a fact check of today's conversation. In the first half of the show, Steven references the work of an academic who studies asymmetric sports rivalries, but he can't remember details about the person's identity.

00:33:35 Speaker_05
Stephen was thinking of Joe Cobbs, a sports business professor at Northern Kentucky University who runs the website norivalry.com.

00:33:44 Speaker_05
Cobbs was a guest presenter on episode 17 of Tell Me Something I Don't Know, a live game show that Stephen hosted from 2017 to 2018.

00:33:53 Speaker_05
Cobbs gave thousands of college football fans 100 rivalry points each, which they could then allocate to their team's various opponents.

00:34:03 Speaker_05
As Stephen recalled, the most unbalanced rivalry was between Boston College and Notre Dame, with Notre Dame fans allocating an average of two rivalry points to Boston College and Boston College fans allocating an average of 74 points to Notre Dame.

00:34:19 Speaker_05
Later, Angela says that University of Chicago psychologist Nick Epley writes that human beings are, quote, relentlessly social and will socialize with non-human objects if other people aren't available.

00:34:32 Speaker_05
This doesn't actually appear to be a phrase that Epley uses in his work. However, University of Utah's Jesse Graham and New York University's Jonathan Haidt have used this exact terminology in their work about social psychology and religion.

00:34:47 Speaker_05
So, it looks like Angela accidentally applied their words to Eppley's research. Then, Alex Dunphy is the name of the nerdy middle child on Modern Family who chose to read Freakonomics during her family's pool party.

00:35:01 Speaker_05
This scene is part of the premiere episode of Season 3, not, as Steven said, Season 1. Also, Stephen says that the Washington generals always lose to the Harlem Globetrotters. This is incorrect.

00:35:15 Speaker_05
Although it rarely happens, the Washington generals have, on occasion, defeated the Harlem Globetrotters. That's it for the fact check.

00:35:26 Speaker_05
No Stupid Questions is part of the Freakonomics Radio Network, which also includes Freakonomics Radio, People I Mostly Admire, and The Economics of Everyday Things. All our shows are produced by Stitcher and Redbud Radio.

00:35:40 Speaker_05
Lyric Bowditch is our production associate. This episode was mixed by Eleanor Osborne with help from Greg Rippin. We had research assistants on this episode from Anya Dubner. Our theme song was composed by Luis Guerra.

00:35:54 Speaker_05
To learn more or to read episode transcripts, visit phreakonomics.com slash NSQ. Thanks for listening.

00:36:07 Speaker_03
I wonder if the queen is thinking about what I had for breakfast today.

00:36:15 Speaker_05
The Phreakonomics Radio Network. The hidden side of everything. Stitcher.