ABSTRACT
In soap operas, regular viewers are often said to become involved in a “parasocial interaction” (Horton & Wohl, 1956), as if they were watching people they truly know and care about. The scenario raises questions of identification-the extent to which viewers imagine themselves as certain characters and think of themselves as carrying out a character’s actions-and involvement-the psychological effect of the perceived reality of a depicted situation, and the need to react to it (Jo & Berkowitz, 1994). “No! Don’t go home with him,” a viewer exclaims out loud, urging the character behind the television glass not to make the same mistake every other woman over the past three years has made on this particular program. We know from self-reports that viewers occasionally talk to people on the screen, shake their heads in dismay, or reel back in their chairs in reaction to a fictional character’s error in judgement or to the gaff of a politician. So, too, in much drama and suspense viewing-or listening in the case of the nearly lost art of radio drama-do audience members become so involved as to lose track of time, growing physically tense at moments of high intrigue, laughing and crying from one moment to the next.
