SIO252: Lindsey Osterman on Parasocial Relationships

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only, this is episode 252, I'm Thomas Smith, and you know what? This is a bit of a change of pace, because I used to do episodes like this all the time, but then politics happened, and 2016 happened, all that, but this is back to kind of a science-y episode, I am really excited to have Lindsey Osterman on, who has been on the show before, we talked about that in the beginning, so you'll hear that, uh, But she's psychologist and she's on the show today to talk about parasocial relationships, which, if Even if you don't know exactly what that means yet, you probably are taking part in some parasocial relationships right now. It's super interesting stuff. She also goes into some studies that have been done and a study that she did with, perhaps, some of you listening involved in that study.

0:01:14 Thomas: She drew from the audience, and I actually had forgotten about it, as you'll hear, because it's been two years. And then toward the end, she even takes us through a study of parasocial relationships with Trump, and how that might predict voting. It's really interesting stuff. So, without further ado, let's get over to the interview with Lindsay Osterman.

0:01:42 Thomas: I am joined by a guest, it's Lindsey Osterman, how you doing?, none of that can be true, I don't know, I agree with that, instantly lies detected, ooh, yeah, I am seeing a lot of side topic here, lot of colleges mysteriously are like, wait, we can't actually do this, and are not doing it, how is your particular school handling things? Things to say I I instantly retract the question because I don't want to cost you your job or something but like amen

0:01:45 Lindsey: Ah, fantastic, living my best life, uh, no, no it's not, yeah, uh my college started classes today, so that was, that was fun, yeah.

0:02:09 Lindsey: I mean, I think that they're, um, they're definitely not the worst example, I think that their handling, no I think I can honestly say that I, I can get behind the reopening plan as far as they go. You know, they're doing a lot of testing. They're doing a phased opening. So they're only bringing back students to campus in waves. And they're taking a lot precautions. But I just think, you know, there's nothing you can do about frat parties. So that's kind of where it ends. Yeah.

0:02:38 Thomas: Those are already bad enough without covid yeah well That's rough, um, yeah, but it, you know, people may remember you from such shows as two years ago, um, when, I think, was that when, uh, we had you do a defense of, uh, evolutionary psychology, or was that a different topic, I don't remember.

0:02:42 Lindsey: Right.

0:02:56 Lindsey: Yes. So the one two years ago was was about the um actually it was about parasocial relationships uh that was the esp response

0:02:56 Thomas: Oh that's right so then the first one we did was even longer ago than that you're saying so

0:03:05 Lindsey: Yeah yeah that was that was two years before that episode so

0:03:09 Thomas: Oh my gosh so we're on a two-year schedule apparently uh Thanks for coming back. I, we must be out here on an asteroid or something that orbits, or maybe I am, it only comes around Every two years, yeah, um, wow, so it's been four years since we talked evo psych, that is your field, correct, can you, uh, for people who don't Remember uh can you can you tell us what your kind of your area is yeah

0:03:12 Lindsey: Yeah Yeah, who Knows Yes. It is um yeah so I'm a social psychologist by training um but I developed an interest in evolutionary Psych in grad school. And not much of my published stuff really takes an explicit Evo focus at this point, but it motivates my questioning in just about everything, including what we're going to be talking about today. So that is

0:03:52 Thomas: Which is parasocial relationships is that right um that is something that does sound applicable and relevant to my life, maybe, I don't know. I'm curious to learn more about what you have to say, so why don't you just define what you mean for everybody? Yeah.

0:03:56 Lindsey: Right.

0:04:08 Lindsey: Sure. Yeah. So a parasocial relationship is the one-sided bond that people can develop with media figures. And so that applies to illustrious podcast hosts such as yourself, but also fictional characters and shows and books and things. And yeah, so critically, they're formed in this sort of one-sided environment, but they still feel and in some ways function in a very real social way, which is kind of interesting.

0:04:37 Thomas: That is interesting so it's is the relationship I have with all the pretend listeners that I have is that what you're saying? The fictional.

0:04:38 Lindsey: Exactly. Yeah. All the ghosts.

0:04:46 Thomas: I've got a great length to invent fictional listeners and like numbers and stuff so I can have this relationship. No, it is interesting. And but like beyond just the fact that I imagine this happens to lowly podcasters like me. It's also just a very fascinating topic. I mean, I'm sure I do the same thing with people I listen to and and fictional characters. So I'm Sure there's a lot to study there.

0:04:51 Lindsey: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, mean, that's kind of the thing that I find interesting about them is on one level, they should be very intuitive because I think that everybody has this experience. I think it's one of the fundamental things that makes it fun and engaging to watch and listen to media. But at this other level, they just really don't make any sense. Like, why should I form a bond with pixels on a screen or recorded audio, right? Right. So that's why I find them interesting. And I, I do think that your perspective on these is especially interesting because like you said, you, you have these, but also you've had the experience of people coming up to you at conferences and they're complete strangers, but they feel like they know you.

0:05:17 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, right.

0:05:54 Lindsey: And that has to be kind of strange. I would, I would imagine. Imagine yeah

0:05:58 Thomas: I, you know, it's interesting. I, I, believe it or not that, that part, I don't have that much of a problem with, cause for some reason I'm okay with people like I, yeah, no, if someone wants to talk to me, I'm like, cool, that's awesome. So I don't really think a whole lot about it, but like, it is true that oftentimes people will message me and they'll say something that I've said or respond to something I've said, and I have no idea what they're talking about. And in their their mind I just told them something you know like they'll Be, and and it's so funny, like I, I, you know, it's all in good humor and everything, but like, sometimes I have to be like, I don't know what you're talking about, like what show of all the million things it was. And it is, it is interesting, I suppose, is the holy grail of this uh field, like the movie Her, or whatever, like is that part of it because that always struck me as a little not realistic but is that are there extreme examples like that oh

0:06:26 Lindsey: Yeah Exactly, oh.

0:06:45 Lindsey: Man. Well oh Well, uh, I mean there, there are extreme examples, but I'd say that Her, actually, I wouldn't call that parasocial because it was actually two-sided, right? Um. Yeah yeah I mean if you assume that the ai was conscious which I I think you can right that's seems

0:06:59 Thomas: Okay, not technically the same oh you can oh okay confession time I don't think I watched that one I think I'm confusing this with there's one where the guy uh it has a relationship with like a sex doll what is that one so that's a little different I can't something in the real no real girl is that what that is oh

0:07:11 Lindsey: Oh oh yeah right right um oh oh yeah lars and the real girl I was thinking of the pt anderson one too uh but

0:07:27 Thomas: Maybe that's the one I'm thinking of oh

0:07:28 Lindsey: But No, Lars in the Real Girl is a thing, um,

0:07:31 Thomas: Anyway, I kind of confused the two things, but so if you take it that the AI is not conscious or whatever, then that would probably be parasocial, right? Because it's not, it's kind of a one-sided thing

0:07:41 Lindsey: Boy man you're asking the hard questions

0:07:43 Thomas: So I didn't mean to skip to the hard questions here let's tackle the talk more about the easy question yeah

0:07:44 Lindsey: Uh yeah No, no, I mean, I think I think that the fact that this is a blurry category is actually really interesting, or it's it's blurry now. I don't think it used to be quite as blurry, right? Like, like if when mass media kind of started to proliferate, you know, you listen to radio programs, you watch stuff on the news or whatever, and you are never going to interact with those people in real time, right? So all of your interactions are one-sided. You're interacting like purely through the fourth wall, as it were.

0:08:14 Thomas: Yeah just everybody thought that Walter Cronkite was their dad or something kind of thing

0:08:18 Lindsey: Yeah, Right, right. So that's the parasocial bond. But if you're talking about something where you're actually having like reciprocal interactions in real time, and that's how you're forming the relationship, I'd say that that's, that's where you're shifting into something else, yeah, pretty much right Um, but like, you know, like a lot of people now have mediated relationships. They, they're friends with people on the internet that they never meet, you know, and that's two-sided, but it looks more similar to a parasocial relationship because you don't meet them in real life. So I don't know, I think these categories are getting getting blurred now, um, in all kinds of interesting ways, um, yeah

0:08:32 Thomas: Just like a relationship gotcha yeah, plus like Like if we all like for people because I, you know, I was just talking about this on my previous episode, but I my Facebook is all largely people I don't know, which I think is different than most people because they don't have a podcast Facebook account that I do like I do. And so in some ways I was thinking like, maybe I guess you could have like, you're suggesting there, you could almost have parasocial relationships with each other because the stuff we post is not really a reflection of our true selves all the time. It might just be kind of a representational thing. So in a weird way, it's like two people who have a parasocial relationship with each other, maybe. Oh, we're yeah now we're really just hold on we haven't had we haven'T had enough of bong hits to get to that level of the cow. We'll save that for later.

0:09:09 Lindsey: Oh Gosh, okay, so like in, in some ways, all relationships are parasocial, is, I think what you're saying does does anybody really know anybody else speak for yourself I

0:09:49 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, that's

0:09:49 Lindsey: Yeah um yeah no I mean, so I again, like, I think that the... The thing that can bring you back to the definitional difference between an interpersonal relationship and a parasocial one is whether you are developing it through one-sided interactions or not. So internet relationships, I'd say, are still reciprocal.

0:09:52 Thomas: True.

0:10:07 Thomas: Gotcha.

0:10:08 Lindsey: Your case is interesting because you end up having interactions with people who developed their relationships with you parasocially. So that's different.

0:10:17 Thomas: Yeah yeah. Is this is this like an appointment? Is this an intervention? You're really just trying to Get on the case of, like, I would need to do something about this. No. Yeah, that is interesting. I mean, people always say, like, every time you know, everyone always go, oh, so weird to hear your voice, and I get it because, like, I've had the same thing back before. It was a piece of shit. I used to listen to Adam Carolla all the time, and, uh, I mean, it was probably on some level always some level piece of, but, like, you, was, before Trump, it wasn't as bad, or Something, um, I used listen to him a lot, and it was like I never met him or anything, I never tried to interact with him, but it was always weird, um. I list back in the Love Line days especially, like, I listen to him on the radio all the time, and whenever I saw him, like, his actual image with the voice, I was like, that's not him, like

0:10:22 Lindsey: Yeah. No no I think it's amazing Yeah. Yeah.

0:11:09 Thomas: I had a whole thing because, like, you know, I never looked him up in the 90s or something, when I was listening to Loveline, I just had a whole, like, idea of who this guy was or his image or whatever in my head, and then I saw him and I could not get the two to go together. It was really weird yeah

0:11:25 Lindsey: Yeah. That probably speaks to something fundamental about I the mechanics of our social brains or something um I'm not an expert in that but um That

0:11:33 Thomas: You know when it comes like the podcast Cognitive Dissonance with Tom and Cecil, everybody always says their voices are switched, like Tom's voice looks like Cecil and vice versa kind of thing, and no

0:11:46 Lindsey: Sounds like a cool conspiracy for Q Anon. Yeah.

0:11:48 Thomas: But it's actually 100% true, like back before I knew them, like just looking at the logo, I thought like, oh, this guy is that and this guy's that, because we just, because, like you say, we have this idea. I think, genuine, generally speaking, it's somehow like a size related thing, like a higher pitched voice is going to be a different size than a lower, but just generally speaking, I think we all do that a little bit.

0:12:10 Thomas: And then now after I met them though, like now I cannot imagine that, you know, like, now that I've been friends with them, I can't remember what it felt like to think that, but but, but. I know I thought that like, I know. I had that opinion for a minute. I appreciate you humoring me on that.

0:12:08 Lindsey: Yeah right yeah yeah no that's that's super interesting no It is, it is, I mean I've had the same experience, uh, with plenty of people that I I meet through an audio medium. So one of the things that maybe we can come back to eventually is the reason I I reached out to you about this now, um, is that you know, so again, parasocial relationships are normative, people have them all the time, but I think that uh, at this moment in history, they might be fulfilling sort of a larger role in people's social lives than they would normally.

0:12:56 Lindsey: Cause I don't know if you noticed, but you know, there's a pandemic. Yeah. And that's totally changed our social landscapes. You know, we're not seeing people face to face as much, if at all, as we used to. And so all of our interactions are taking place in these sort of mediated environments. And people are paying more attention, I think, and caring more about what happens in mediated environment. They actually, I was listening to The Daily last week, and they brought up a similar point along these lines. And I was like, this is, parasocial relationships.

0:12:56 Thomas: Yeah pandemic yeah yeah It's, that's, I listen to that podcast all the time. I don't know if I technically have a parasocial relationship with Michael Barbaro, so I'm not a big enough fan so I like yeah maybe somebody else, um, yeah, that's interesting, I didn't think about the fact that, yeah, since we're all, this is the only way we get most of our socializing, socializing these days. I've also, is it, it's kind of, I've noticed too, like, somewhat related to this, you know, there, there are a lot of times where you have like a text relationship with somebody and then when you talk to them or interact with them or see them or whatever it's like a whole different feeling yeah

0:13:36 Lindsey: Yeah, yeah. I don't either. No.

0:13:50 Lindsey: Mm-hmm. Mm hm. Uh huh. It can be super awkward. Like it online dating, I think it's like that, you know, if you if you develop a relationship, I mean, largely through text messages, I think is how it used to work I have

0:14:09 Thomas: Weird I was gonna say all right grandpa like now it's just you swipe and then you go meet or something so there's not right

0:14:22 Lindsey: Yeah I I don't know about, I was, I was off the internet dating before Twitter. I mean Twitter, uh, Tinder happened. But uh, but like back in the day, right, you exchange messages with people and then you met in real life and it was super weird and awkward, um, and that's how dating should be, so

0:14:42 Thomas: Yeah. That's how god intended yeah no that's interesting I

0:14:42 Lindsey: Uh, yeah yeah It's become more of an area of interest in psychology. More recently, it started off as like a communications construct. But more recently, some social psychologists have sort of picked it up because of that weird realness factor. And so there's been quite a bit of research over the past couple of decades about the strange ways in which these relationships are real. So I thought maybe I could give you a few examples of some interesting findings there. For example, there's this classic effect in social psychology called social facilitation. It's basically just an audience effect.

So if you're doing a task that's super easy or one that is very well learned, it actually turns out that you do it slightly better and slightly more efficiently in front of other people uh but you get the opposite effect with a difficult task or one that you haven't learned very well so an audience makes you Worse. Yeah, um, so that- that was first established in like the late 1800s with people, and it's been replicated a bunch of times since then. And so one study, this was by uh Gardner and Knowles, it was published in 2008, they tried to see if they could replicate that effect but with parasocial relationship partners, and the

0:15:14 Thomas: Yeah huh that's interesting so

0:16:05 Lindsey: Way? Yeah Uh, I thought this was kind of clever, so like in a lot of big research institutions, um, you know, you're getting most of your data from intro psych students, right? And a lot times they'll have like a big mass testing session at the beginning of the semester where they just give people like a bunch of personality questionnaires and stuff. So these researchers put a question in that mass testing session about people's favorite television character so that they wouldn't have to tip them off later in their actual study that their study had anything to do with television. So they got their favorite character, and then, you know, months later, they bring them into the lab for the study that is supposedly about like motor coordination, um

0:16:04 Thomas: How would they do that I Always wonder, who are these people who doing these Are like subjects of these experiments? I will go my whole life and I've never been the subject of an experiment that I know of yeah like

0:16:46 Lindsey: Uh-huh Seriously Seriously? Did you take like intro psych in college or anything?

0:16:54 Thomas: No is that what it is it's all well I guess that's what they say oftentimes it's always like students in a in a certain age range who are in these classes that are people are being that are studying that okay and so that's why oftentimes results are a little skewed okay

0:16:58 Lindsey: Yeah. Mm hmm. Alas. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean that that has been a big shift in the past, I'd say like 10 years in psych that there's been a big push to get different populations. But for a long time, yeah, the psychology was accumulated data about intro psych like students, so um, for certain variables, certainly, yeah.

0:17:12 Thomas: Yeah gotcha yeah that would be, you'd think that would be a certain, there would be skewing effects there, yeah. Okay so anyway they but they're sly about it on this this particular experiment

0:17:33 Lindsey: Yeah so yeah, so they uh, they bring them in for this motor coordination study and they're having them do like a very simple tracing task, um, and they randomly assign their participants to either do the simple tracing task with their dominant or non-dominant hand, um, and so obviously doing it with your dominant hand should be easy, just trace the lines, if you do it with your non-dominant hand that's significantly harder, um, they also randomly assigned them to uh, to do this in the presence of an image of either their favorite character that they identified during mass testing

0:17:37 Thomas: Okay oh, man now I'm sad I really thought someone was was gonna come out in like a Chuck E. Cheese outfit or something like they had a yeah

0:18:12 Lindsey: Yeah they hired all the celebrities and they brought them into the lab very expensive study

0:18:20 Thomas: They picked a limited range of characters that they could do like Disneyland when they have the Eeyore and I don't know okay so it's so it'S just an image which that's Interesting. I mean, what do you think about that? I mean, do you think you get the same, like, even if this experiment works one one way or the other, would it also hinge on how much we consider a picture being displayed, you know, like how much does that trigger, like, "Oh, I feel like I'm being watched by this person"? Okay.

0:18:26 Lindsey: Yeah mickey mouse else yeah Yeah.

0:18:50 Lindsey: I mean, I I think it, I think it's a very conservative stimulus. If you get an effect with this, I think that you probably get a stronger effect if you were to do something else, you know, um, that's a little more close to the actual interactions that people typically have. But yeah, so so they're either doing an easy task or a hard task in the presence of either their favorite character or a character that's not their favorite, and they replicate the social facilitation effect. People were better on the easy task if they did it in the quote-unquote presence of their favorite character, and they were worse on the harder task compared to the the people that were in the presence of a non-favored character, um.

0:18:59 Thomas: Gotcha.

0:19:26 Thomas: Huh.

0:19:27 Lindsey: And they did a second study that was paired with it where they they demonstrated that that effect seemed to be explained by how real favorite characters feel compared to non-flavored characters, yeah.

0:19:38 Thomas: Interesting. So when so this why does it matter if you have the parasocial relationship then? Like when I think of like, oh, if I'm doing something in front of people, it doesn't matter if I know who they are or not, does it?

0:19:41 Lindsey: Um Yeah, Because those, if it's real people, then those people are real. But if we're talking about television characters, it's the bond that you form with those characters that would make them feel real to you. And so the presence of a character that you don't have a bond with is not likely to trigger that sense of being with a real person as much as somebody that you that you do have a parasocial bond with. Yeah.

0:20:13 Thomas: Oh, okay, yeah, I suppose that makes sense, but I I don't know, I guess I was just thinking, like, yeah, if I see, you know, if you, if you quiz me on like who my favorite whatever is, it doesn't mean that I'm not going to also know whoever the other one you put up is, kind of thing, like I, but I okay

0:20:15 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:20:28 Lindsey: That's probably that that was part of their assumption I think right that On average, the non-favored character is is not somebody that people are going to have parasocial bonds with, or at least not consistently, right? Yeah. So that's cool.

0:20:31 Thomas: Okay So so you're saying this this was an affect them that they measured that this actually held up under those circumstances wow weird

0:20:42 Lindsey: Uh-huh yeah which is is weird isn't it I Mean, because it's not a person. Yeah.

0:20:48 Thomas: Yeah it is weird it Makes me wonder if I need to put up posters of people and like, is there, can I, can I, can I do this to, like, help me? You know, like if I have posters of, you know, Elliot Smith or something, am I gonna feel like okay now elliot wants me to actually practice music or something no but for real probably not it's just if I'm tracing something okay if I ever need to trace something I gotta put up a picture and then I'll do it better got it yeah

0:21:05 Lindsey: Totally. Yes yes that's how that works uh well I I mean I it's just if you're tracing things no I think that, I think that's an empirical question, you should try that out and collect some data and report back, see if it applies to that

0:21:32 Thomas: I guess if I you know if I'm playing a song that I'm comfortable with theoretically I should do it a little better okay maybe I'll try it do some recordings you know blind to all

0:21:38 Lindsey: That's the idea yeah yeah yeah I didn't mean this to be like a life hack thing but like totally man go for it good

0:21:45 Thomas: Yeah Yeah. No, I'm trying to turn it into a life hack thing. Look, I need, look, my life needs to be hacked. I'm try to find anything I can always on the lookout for another hack.

0:21:50 Lindsey: Yeah Me too. Um, yeah, so I mean, this and the the thing that I'm about to talk about next, I think it just reinforces the point that, like, again, like in some ways parasocial bonds feel intuitive because that's how we experience them, but but again, like they're not real, and it's real weird that we Seem to experience them in as real a way that we do. And I don't know, for me, like thinking about this from an Evo standpoint, I think that it sheds light on some some basic features of like our social mechanics in ways that could be interesting. Another area of research that that's a little more connected to some of the research that I've started doing recently is on whether parasocial relationships seems to seem to fulfill belonging needs. Needs. It's all humans. We're part of a very social species, an ultra-social species, if you will. And that means that having social bonds and important social relationships with other people is like a very fundamental need to us, like as fundamental as eating and shelter and water and those kinds of things.

0:22:16 Thomas: Yeah, I

0:23:03 Lindsey: And so one question has been, are parasocial relationships actually actually fulfilling belonging needs to some extent. And so this has been studied in a couple of different ways, but one way that I think is interesting is they've tried to replicate social restoration effects. So the idea here is that after people are rejected, they suffer all these negative consequences. Their self-esteem suffers and they get more aggressive, which is kind of interesting, and a variety of things. But then if you remind people after the rejection experience that they have these important social connections, or you actually let them reach out to a friend or close family member or something and talk to them, then all those negative effects are ameliorated. Um, yeah. Uh, and so that's called like a, uh, a belonging replenishment effect.

0:23:51 Lindsey: And so some researchers have tried again to replicate this with parasocial relationships. So yeah, so

0:23:57 Thomas: Pop in the earbuds listen to some uh some podcasts you

0:24:02 Lindsey: They'll bring people in, they create a rejection experience, and then they give people an opportunity to dwell on a relationship with a favored parasocial other. So in the specific study I'm thinking about, they said, you know, choose a celebrity that you particularly like and have a close relationship with. And then they just like like spent a few minutes meditating on what they like best about that person and, you know, writing a paragraph about them. And they found that that they can get the same sort of social replenishment effects with that manipulation as they can with, with social, um, manipulations.

0:24:38 Thomas: Know, imagine if we had no scruples in our human testing, like, I feel like a lot, like, it's amazing the stuff that people come up with to do these experiments, but It's all, it's, you know, stuff like hanging a picture, like writing a five paragraph essay, you know, it'd be amazing if, if I wonder what the results would be if we were allowed, ourselves, not that we should, but, or anything, but like if we're able to do experiments that a little more direct than this like that's interesting I wonder if how big the effects would be oh like you actually get like you know bill murray to come talk to me for a little bit no or something like yeah it's I it's Again, the the the chucky cheese costume, actually taking it to the next level in terms, no, I'm just kidding, I I I, um, I know there's good reasons why we are very careful with human testing, but it is, it just struck me, it's like, like, interesting that they have to come up with all these really like innovative ways of trying to find these effects. And like, even though they're, they're a little bit, you attenuated, is that the word, or the opposite

0:24:47 Lindsey: Mm-hmm.

0:24:58 Lindsey: Mm-huh. Okay. Like, what do you have in mind? Oh my God. Oh, that'd be amazing.

0:25:40 Lindsey: Yeah

0:25:40 Thomas: Of that? Um, in how they're trying to measure these things, they'RE still getting effects. It's just really cool.

0:25:44 Lindsey: Yeah, yeah, I think so too, um, and I think it's important to say that, like, um, the the paragraph writing thing, like, that's that's a um a manipulation that's been used in other contexts so you know it's it's validated to produce the experiences that people are writing about at least temporarily so um

0:25:55 Thomas: Right. Okay. Right, of course. Yeah, that makes sense that, that it's, it's almost as though these people have done this before, or there's some body of science that they they can reference to yeah

0:26:03 Lindsey: Yeah yeah it's almost like they went to school for too long to to yeah

0:26:12 Thomas: Yeah try to learn how to do stuff yeah gotcha

0:26:14 Lindsey: With with freshmen yeah with freshman psych students, um, so, that belongingness kind of literature is, is really the the area that I've drilled down into recently, um, and actually you were kind enough in late 2018 to let me recruit some participants from your audience for one of the studies yeah yeah I

0:26:16 Thomas: Gotcha wait I was cool I don't remember that but I will assume it was all for the best did I ruin anybody am is the irb coming after me yeah

0:26:36 Lindsey: Hope not uh yeah they got a warrant um they're very upset uh no actually the the study that I did was totally correlational so I wasn't doing anything weird with your with your audience but but yeah if anybody participated in that um you're about to find out what happened with your data so that's cool yeah um and this paper actually came out uh late last year so if anybody's interested I can I can send you a pdf to post or whatever

0:26:44 Thomas: Yeah. Okay. Okay, cool. That's super cool. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, definitely send it to me. I'll post it.

0:27:05 Lindsey: Yeah yeah so so late 2018 do you remember what was happening how would you 70 years ago

0:27:12 Thomas: Dear God, the midterms, that's all I remember. But is there some other thing that,

0:27:14 Lindsey: Yeah there was a hashtag trending on twitter um 2018 this might be me too

0:27:19 Thomas: That, is this Me Too? Okay. I, you the years are just gone for me. Like I, Me Too could have been anywhere from 2015 to now and I wouldn't know.

0:27:25 Lindsey: Yeah I hear you I mean I think the only reason I remember that is because we were collecting data um but uh Yeah, so, uh, so Me Too was trending, and, uh, you know, all of our idols were getting cast against the rocks, and I was sitting in my office with my, my student at the time, Theresa, and I was like, very sad, because all the stuff about Louis CK had just come out yep yep and and I I so sad about louie ck and and I was telling her how much I loved Louis CK and how sad I was.

And in that moment, a study was born. I thought it would be really interesting to see if we could replicate some of the effects from the interpersonal forgiveness literature, but within parasocial relationships. So we decided to look at reactions that people were having to these transgressions that were coming out as a function of the parasoical bonds that people had with, um, with these various figures in the media. So for the study that I recruited, uh, from your audience for, we chose just like three specific examples that were kind of across the spectrum on severity. Um.

0:27:29 Thomas: Yeah. But of all our parasocial relationships no way yep me too okay okay

0:28:39 Lindsey: So Aziz Ansari was one of the three targets. Uh, Louis CK was one them and, uh. Kevin Spacey was the third one. And so depending on, you know, we did random assignment to determine who people were answering questions about. And we asked them about how close their relationship was with that person. We asked them questions about how they perceived the behaviors that they were alleged to have engaged in at the time. And then the, you know, the outcome variables we were interested in is, did people forgive that behavior? And did they want to continue having a parasocial relationship with them? So did they continue you to feel close with that person. And based on stuff from the interpersonal forgiveness literature, we were thinking like, all right, so what typically happens is that we're more forgiving of people that we feel close to.

0:29:30 Lindsey: And one of the reasons for this interpersonally is because we interpret their behavior differently. So if a friend does something rude, I'm more likely to sort of make excuses for that behavior or contextualize it in the context of my friendship with that person than I am for like a stranger. Yeah.

0:29:30 Thomas: Yeah yeah Is it, is it kind of like maybe a motivated reasoning thing, or like you need this person, you know, kind of thing, like, okay? Yeah it makes sense

0:29:53 Lindsey: Yeah. It's it's both right I mean because our relationships are important if if we just severed them every time you know anybody did anything wrong we wouldn't have any relationships so it's definitely a functional mechanism there and so so yeah so we were like okay so we should get people who had closer bonds with these these individuals should be more forgiving and

0:29:58 Thomas: Yeah now is there any possible counteracting effect of like you're like more hurt by something that somebody does if they're closer to you than not okay just curious

0:30:17 Lindsey: Yep. Yep. Yeah. Both of those things are true. Yeah. Um, and I'm sure that there's a ceiling too, right? Like if somebody did something just unspeakably awful, if, you know, if they murdered somebody close to you, I don't think that your close relationship with them is enough to maintain that relationship. Right. Um. But up to a point, yeah, people tend to be more forgiven.

So our, we had a number of hypotheses policies but the in simple terms we thought that people who felt closer before the the transgressive behavior would be more likely to forgive it and we thoughtthat the reason for that would be because of how they were interpreting the behavior and we were half right so People were more forgiving if they felt closer to the person before they did the thing, and they were more likely to say that they felt close to them now, like post, um, post the transgresive behavior. But it didn't actually seem to be a function of how they were interpreting the behavior. So we asked them questions about like, you know, how severe do you perceive this behavior to be? And was this person responsible for the behavior? Do you think it was intentional and things like that? And we thought that that would explain variance in the relationship

0:30:29 Thomas: Yeah yeah yeah right right hmm Okay.

0:31:33 Lindsey: Between closeness and forgiveness. And it didn't.

0:31:33 Thomas: So It's so they didn't have any different, that's interesting, so you didn't, there wasn't a correlation between like making excuses or maybe reducing your perception of how bad the things were, it's just that they for some reason still, still forgave them or somewhat, or okay oh

0:31:55 Lindsey: Yeah, so it's kind of complicated, right? So all of these things had correlations with each other but It's just, it, in the analysis that we did, it wasn't the case that like the differences in their perceptions of the behavior were the thing that was leading them to feel more forgiving, um So there was something else that was explaining why, you know, if I felt close to Asisa, I'm sorry, I felt more forgiving of the behaviour, there was something else going on other than how I was interpreting his behaviour, and honestly I'm still not sure what that is, I'd Be interested to hear if you have intuitions about that.

0:32:00 Thomas: Yeah yeah Huh.

0:32:26 Thomas: Well. Okay, let's say instead of forget the the Me Too thing for a second, let's say some other example in your experiment, let's say it's like cutting someone off, and you know, with your car, and you're saying for the person that they had a parasocial relationship with versus someone they didn't, you were expecting, so like you're expecting that they would still be close to the person and you were expecting the reasoning would be somewhere in the like, well, cutting someone off with your car's not actually that bad, you know?

0:32:57 Lindsey: Yes.

0:32:57 Thomas: Like they would have made the Excuses on that level, whereas that, that's not, yeah, I guess maybe I wouldn't have expected that, I don't know, because like for me it feels like it, what kicks in is just this idea of like, well, this is someone I'm invested in and it's like you're you're Kind of invested in their story of like, wow, you know, they can do better, they can, they can recover, whereas when the random person cuts you off, you're like, yeah, fuck that guy, like I don't care.

0:32:57 Lindsey: Yeah Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah.

0:33:23 Lindsey: No.

0:33:23 Thomas: You know so I don't know maybe that's that's kind of how I would think of it but yeah well

0:33:26 Lindsey: Yeah I think that I think you may be right about that I mean it's I guess I um don't know so

0:33:34 Thomas: What was the Timing of asking about their, um, about the offenses, did you ask them about the offenses in a vacuum, not assigning them to the person, or did you asked them specifically about, like, here's what Louis CK did, what do you think of that, or kind of thing, like, or did you as, like, what or how bad do you view X action not attached to a person?

0:33:35 Lindsey: Oh.

0:33:56 Lindsey: No, they were specifically about the targets yeah and we We thought that was kind of important because I didn't want to, I was worried about like describing the behaviors in the study in a way that was like leading, so we asked like filter questions at the beginning that were like, are you aware of the allegations against these people, and Then if, if they were, then they qualified to answer the questions, so yeah.

0:33:58 Thomas: About the okay okay just making sure yeah okay Right. Gotcha Yeah, so when you talk about the correlations, so how did you measure, how do you measure the other side of it, like, are there, do you need examples of like people they didn't care about that did similar things yeah go ahead right

0:34:21 Lindsey: Oh.

0:34:34 Lindsey: That's yeah No, that's a great question, so um, essentially we measured like closeness on a continuous scale, so that we had like a set of items asking like, how close do you feel to Louis CK, how connected do you you feel to Him, um, and uh, people's score on that closeness measure was our way of measuring the strength of the parasocial bond that they had with him.

0:34:57 Thomas: But I see where you're coming from, because it's like when something's in the news, like, I don't know, back in the 90s with Bill Clinton it's no coincidence that democrats are all like well you know at the time or like ah you know blah blah kind of making excuses for those specific actions um And maybe to bring to, to bring up a maybe example that'll make my audience feel a little better, when you talk about evangelicals and Trump, you know, like Okay, they're, they're all about like, you need the person in the White House has to have moral leadership, and then Trump gets, gets elected, and then nobody thinks that anymore.

0:35:02 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah Mm-hmm.

0:35:31 Thomas: Yeah. So that's kind of the angle you were coming from. Like that, that would have made more sense to you. Like they would, they would downplay specific actions, but you're saying results tend to show that they don't really downplay the actions. They just, there's some sort of either like forgiveness maybe. Is that what you think might be?

0:35:30 Lindsey: And They're like oh that's fine yeah yeah yeah and it it's like, um, yeah, I'm like, I'm not sure, I think that you're onto something when you say like, all right, I don't, you know, this was terrible, but like, this is still a a relationship that's important, or I'm still getting something out of this, essentially. And to me, that sounds kind of like you're compartmentalizing, like what that person's producing from their behavior, which I, you know, maybe that's it. I don't know.

0:35:58 Thomas: Yeah.

0:36:14 Lindsey: But it definitely,

0:36:13 Thomas: Yeah, well, I also just think it's like, I don't know, like you're just invested in the story of a person, you know, like if it, if a friend or family member does something wrong, like you said earlier, you can't just abandon everyone who ever did something wrong. And so therefore, you Know, there there's that, that sort of happening where you're like, well, maybe, cause I still, you KNOW, not anymore so much, but for like a year I was like, can't maybe Louis CK can just actually give a good apology. You know, maybe he could actually do something and then, youknow, then, uh, yeah, yeah. Exactly.

0:36:41 Lindsey: Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah, and that would have changed my perception of it, right? Actually, yeah, we did a replication study that paired with this one. We changed a couple of things, but what made me think about it there was that we assessed things about people's perceptions of apologies um And that was hugely important, right? So I like, I don't, I don't want to make it sound like, you know, that forgiveness in relationships depends on excuse making, exactly, but it does. From the interpersonal literature, there's... there's pretty good evidence that it does change your perceptions of things in ways that facilitate relationship maintenance. And it just, um, the, uh, closeness with people in, in an interpersonal sense, right. And interpersonal relationships like changes your perception of, of offensive behaviors in ways that, that do facilitate forgiveness and do facilitate the relationship.

0:36:49 Thomas: Oh yeah sorry what changes your relationship of what I might have not followed that right so Did, did it, uh, in this companion thingy, did it make people feel like an apology was better or worse based on how close they are to the person? Okay. Gotcha

0:37:44 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so closeness was, uh. Positively correlated with, uh., perceived severe or severity perceived sincerity of the apology. Um, and that did seem to matter. Which makes sense. I mean, that's pretty intuitive.

0:37:53 Thomas: Yeah Is there no guarantee that, like, how sincere you judge an apology to be really matters in terms of how much you're forgiving someone, or is that just taken for granted okay it did seem gotcha okay

0:38:06 Lindsey: It did seem to matter. Yeah. Yeah, and, you know, anecdotally, again, like that was, that was part of what was hard for me to get over with Louis CK is, you know he's he's this incredibly insightful self-reflective person and then the way that he responded to this was just so against all that that I couldn't I couldn't separate that from you know the reason that I enjoy to stand up and things I

0:38:23 Thomas: Yeah yep I know it still blows my mind I'm still mad it really didn't He just didn't make it feel like he cared at all about the victims at all, like he just, it just, it was like it was an annoyance to him or something, that like this thing that happened that now he had to deal with.

0:38:33 Lindsey: Yeah me too that's Yep.

0:38:48 Lindsey: Exactly.

0:38:48 Thomas: It wasn't like ah shit I need to do yeah ah so far anyway I don't want to go on a tangent, but okay. That's interesting.

0:38:52 Lindsey: I know yeah lucy gay that's sad

0:38:55 Thomas: Yeah. But I still, yeah, I don'T know if I would say I feel a closest closeness to Louis CK anymore, but like, I guess if it was two people who were, who were guilty of identical things and one, I just did not have any bond with whatsoever, you know, I suppose compared to that, I would still think like, oh, maybe there's still a tiny chance Louis C.K. could like wake up and actually do. Yeah, So maybe I would still feel like a little bit more potential forgiveness or something.

0:38:55 Lindsey: Yeah or like motivation too anyway like it depends on his his behavior. But like, yeah, if he could turn things around right now.

0:39:24 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Right. I wish it's not going to happen.

0:39:31 Lindsey: No, it won't happen. It won't happened. It's very sad.

0:39:33 Thomas: Well, that's super interesting. I'm so glad that, uh, our, my audience, uh. Took part in that. That's really cool. I remember now, now that you say something, I remember, but I think because like you, you didn't have anything like, or like it took a while before there was anything to share.

0:39:35 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It was pretty fun. It was pretty fun.

0:39:50 Thomas: So I, I kind of forgot about it. Yeah.

0:39:49 Lindsey: Yeah I mean God peer review man. Yeah like

0:39:52 Thomas: Oh peer review wait they still do that so you didn't just submit this to a pay-to-play journal and and then decry it as the downfall of western civilization so

0:39:54 Lindsey: Yeah yeah isn't that great. You know funny enough I didn't didn't do that. I went through like five rounds of peer review before this this was published so it was intense so so do you want to do you want to talk about this Trump study because this is uh yeah all

0:40:13 Thomas: Sure, let's do it let's go out with a bang yeah

0:40:15 Lindsey: Right yeah so so this was published by shira gabriel and colleagues in 2018 and they collected data on their questions, um, like immediately after the, the outcome of the 2016 election, that's important. And they, they started with the relatively simple assertion, I think, that it was kind of surprising that Donald Trump got elected. Um. And not just to white liberals, I don't think. I think that even a lot of people who supported him and voted for him, I,

0:40:37 Thomas: Well I think it was surprising to donald trump that he got elected.

0:40:46 Lindsey: I mean, I'm not sure Yeah. And so they, the research question that was motivating their study was, you know, this seems like a weird outcome. And so maybe we need to go beyond, like the normal postmortem of elections to try to understand this and, you know, Russian interference, sure. But they were, they were taking a slightly different angle on it, which was, is it possible, you know, Donald Trump used to have a reality show. I don't know if you knew this.

0:41:14 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:41:17 Lindsey: That's that was a joke

0:41:17 Thomas: When the aforementioned Adam Carolla was on that show, I did watch a few episodes of it and never again because Trump was a zero to me. It's very clear. By the way, this is not just in retrospect. I never told anybody about the season of Celebrity Apprentice I watched. I don't think I've ever talked about it other than that I watched it and this one season. It was so clear he was making everything up as he went along. He was such a fraud. There was nothing to, Oh my God. It's amazing that the producers who created an image of a successful person in Trump really did ruin the world. Uh, they are pretty much entirely responsible for Donald Trump as president. It is amazing. Anyway, side note, end of side note.

0:41:50 Lindsey: Oh that's exactly where we're going that is not a side note um yeah no So, so, Trump has the Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice, and these researchers were wondering, like, I wonder if the parasocial bonds that people formed with him on during that show had any, could predict their, their voting behavior at all

0:41:58 Thomas: Okay. Oh, it's not. All right. Sure. Oh God. I'm already depressed by this.

0:42:16 Lindsey: Yeah It's gonna get worse. Um, so they, they recruited about 500 people for this, for this study, um, and again, this was very shortly after the election, right? So they, we didn't have that much information about Trump as the president yet. Um, all of the information that we had about him was, you know, if we watch the Apprentice, um, and also his behavior on the the campaign trail, right?

0:42:41 Lindsey: Okay, so they get about 500 people. And I think it's worth explaining the analytical strategy here a little bit. Obviously, this is not an experiment. I wish that it had been a lab experiment, but it wasn't. It was a correlational analysis of a real thing that happened to our country. But the logic of what they're doing is they're saying, okay, we have this hypothesis that maybe closer parasocial bonds with Trump would predict likelihood of voting, but that relationship could be confounded by a bunch of things, right? And so their strategy was to measure and try to statistically account for all those potential confounds to try to strengthen the claim that if they find a relationship between the parasocial bond and voting behavior, that maybe there really is something unique about the parasоcial bond, and it's not just

0:42:41 Thomas: Right yeah interesting okay

0:43:31 Lindsey: The spurious result of something else. Um, so yeah, so if you wanted to predict, you know, who Joe Blow voted for in the 2016 election, like, you know, what kinds of variables might be relevant to that? Um, would you think

0:43:44 Thomas: Um, mean you you would think that party affiliation would be a major one or like some actual you would hope that like policy would matter but I think I think you and I both matt know that that has nothing to do with anything yeah

0:43:48 Lindsey: For sure yeah I think we do yeah because warren is not actually our candidate so there's that

0:43:59 Thomas: Yeah and Uh, like, I just- just demographic information, like how much you- you- you know, see yourself reflected in the candidate. I would imagine that's some amount of factor. There's got to be a lot of things, right? Okay.

0:44:00 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:44:13 Lindsey: Oh, sure. Yeah, um, yeah, so they- they measured a bunch of these, those usual suspects. So they, they measured political beliefs in a few different ways. They measured, like, you know, how much do you identify as liberal? How much do I identify as conservative? How strongly are you affiliated with the Republican Party and the Democrat Party and so on? They also assess, like, past voting behavior as sort of a more objective metric. Of, you know, support for a party. They also measured, I thought this was interesting. They measured critical cynicism, which was definitely very relevant to how Trump ran his campaign, right? Right? Don't trust politicians. Uh-huh. So they measure that. And they also got a variety of demographic things that might be relevant here, like income level, education level, and things like that. Then on top of all of those things, they measured parasocial bonds with Trump and the questions that they were asking were specific to the apprentice. So there were things like, you know, when Trump was on The Apprentice, I felt great about him. You know, I thought Trump was a great guy on The Apprentice, that kind of thing.

0:44:36 Thomas: Right yeah uh yes it was is there any way, like, are they- do we know if they're reverse engineering that, like, can we tell if, you know, they only feel that way because they later like Trump, and then kind of revise their memory about it, or- yeah so there's not really any way to evaluate that

0:45:30 Lindsey: A good question, right? Because this is retrospective. It's not a great way.

0:45:38 Thomas: Makes sense yep all right just wonder right

0:45:39 Lindsey: Yeah. But yeah, I mean, so they assess that and they also assess like attitudes now. So, you know, I guess there is a way that if you're accounting for that in your analysis, that if it is retrospectative, that should sort of show up there right um but you're right I mean this is a an inherent limitation of doing a retrospective study, yeah.

0:45:54 Thomas: Yeah so hypothetically that could really mess up your data, like, if it were true that everybody, like, rewrites their memory based on, you know, like, well, I like this guy now, so natural, I must have loved the show or something, I must have loved him on the show, if that were true, that would kind of mess stuff up a little bit, but maybe that's not true

0:46:06 Lindsey: Yeah, if it were and, and I think, I think it's very fair to say that our, our memories are not perfect and that they are influenced by subsequent events, but at the same time, I totally remember that I used to really, really love Louis C.K. and I don't now so yeah um so Yeah, so parasocial bonds with Trump, they measured that, and then they also measured like a couple of control things there too. So they measured just like basic familiarity with Trump, to make sure that wasn't it, and they measured like media consumption in general, right? So maybe just people who watch TV more also were more likely to watch The Apprentice, and, you know, were more unlikely to see his campaign ads or something, you know, um,

0:46:13 Thomas: Yeah yeah, that's true good point yep okay all Right, well,

0:46:54 Lindsey: Okay, so they measure all these things, and what they did in their analysis was like, build a predictive model using all of these different variables. So if you imagine that you start with like, political ideology, and you use that to predict voting behavior, you're definitely going to do a better job than just like a 50-50 coin flip in terms of predicting who somebody voted for, right?

0:47:12 Thomas: If I remember all my studies that came out predicting who voted for, uh, for Donald Trump, it turned out like racism was the big... racism and sexism were like the biggest factors, but I'll set that aside I guess yeah

0:47:22 Lindsey: Man, yeah, they should have, they shouldn't have accounted for racism. Yeah, so but but still, like ideology should be should get you to like like a better than chance place in terms of predicting who they voted for, right? So you got that variable first, and then you add, say, party affiliation on top of ideology, and that'll make your prediction a little bit better, right, than just with ideology alone. You add an income, it gets a little better, and so on and so forth. And so the question is, when we add the parasocial bond on top of all those other things, do we still get added unique predictive value from the parasоcial bond? And if we do, then it's unlikely that, like, conservatives were just more likely to watch The Apprentice, and that's why we

0:47:25 Thomas: Yeah yeah you would hope hmm yeah yeah

0:48:04 Lindsey: Get the relationship. It's really something unique. So they did this, and they did in fact find that the parasocial bonds that people formed during The Apprentice uniquely predicted their likelihood of having voted for him, their current attitudes toward him, the positivity of them, their likely of believing his campaign promises, which again, they didn't know yet whether he would do that. He hadn't we don't we didn't have any information about him as an actual president and their probability of believing what the researchers called it, his controversial statements. I think that you and I would probably say his lies, but the parasocial relationship predicted their likelihood of believing his lies. Right. And to me, again, this makes total sense. This is the kind of crap that we do with our friends and other people that we like and and have good relationships with, and it is so dangerous and how it manifests in this context, right?

Because, like, again, it makes sense for me to, if my friend is rude to me, it makes sense for you to look at that behavior and say, I still like my friend, that's not representative of her, she's probably having a bad day, that makes sense, but the difference is that I have about my friend, and from watching The Apprentice, like, what, what is more manufactured and artificial than watching somebody in a reality TV

0:48:05 Thomas: Wow yeah yeah yeah

0:49:30 Lindsey: Show, and that was your point at the beginning of this, right? Like, it's such an artificial narrative that you're getting, um, so that's, yeah, that is potentially one of the most dangerous things, um, about this. Yeah.

0:49:44 Thomas: That is Very interesting. I, you know, I'm just trying to think, like, it's, but it wouldn't be as though, like, every relation, parasocial relationship would be positive, right? Yeah.

0:49:53 Lindsey: That's true, yeah, a lot of times with these studies, they're, um, they're implicitly measuring sort of like positive bonds, that's an important thing to say, so all the questions were like, I really enjoyed it when I saw Trump on The Apprentice, things like that.

0:50:01 Thomas: Because There's always the villain in reality shows too too. Usually like there's the I don't know. I don'T watch a lot of reality TV. I'm a bad example of this, but I know that frequently if it's anything like wrestling, which I also don't watch, there's a heel that people love to hate. Like I wonder how that know separate topic, but I wonder like what kind of parasocial relationship is that? Would they be more likely to like not at all trust the person than someone they didn't know? Or would like the positive associational feelings or something still go with a, with a weird negative relationship.

0:50:06 Lindsey: Uh-huh. Yeah

0:50:39 Thomas: I don't know.

0:50:39 Lindsey: I have a feeling that if it if it really is a villain uh that that will bleed over into people's actual judgments of that person even if again they they know that it's a character

0:50:45 Thomas: Yeah. Oh my gosh. There's a, there's a great episode of 30 rock where, Jack Donaghy's girlfriend's mom thinks they have him play. Uh, you know, of course it's Alec Baldwin speaking of the parasocial relationships that it might be villainous. And he, uh, he like, it turns out her, the mom just hates him. And it's because of the soap opera she watches is, you know, it's obviously just him also playing the soap opera villain, but like, we're supposed to believe that it looks just like him, you don't like, so the villain in the soap operas just Alec Baldwin. So she hates him and, uh... It just reminded me of that.

0:50:49 Lindsey: Oh yeah uh-huh uh-uh I remember that episode yeah

0:51:20 Thomas: Yeah. So that could be, that could happen.

0:51:21 Lindsey: Um yeah yeah I think I really think so I mean I think That the what I get from all of this literature is that we're applying um perception to these relationships in ways that are, you know, probably misplaced or at least they're not functioning the way that they were designed to originally uh but there's they're operating that way anyway um which is definitely something to be aware of I think yeah

0:51:25 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, Yeah.

0:51:49 Thomas: Yeah... No No kidding. All right. Note to self, don't make Trump out to be a successful businessman on a show. Not do that. Oh my gosh. That is super fascinating. I can't believe the time has already flown by that. That was amazing. I, you know, it was really nice to do like a good old fashioned sciencey episode. I haven't done one of those in a while, probably because the world fell apart and mainly talking about politics and stuff, but that, that was really interesting. Thanks for taking us through those studies and yeah, thanks for developing. We all have a little bit more of a social parasocial relationship with Lindsay Osterman oh hey throw out your plugs you're doing a podcast now right oh

0:51:56 Lindsey: Don't do that anymore yeah I know yeah yeah that happens yeah yeah yeah yeah for sure thanks for having me oh oh Yeah, yeah, uh, me and my friend Sarah are, are doing a podcast about books. We've been reading a lot of fun books and talking about them. It's called We're on the Same Page, uh, and that, yeah, it's, it's a nod to the fact that she and I have been friends for like 15 years and we agree with each other too much but um, except sometimes. Anyway, so we're all the page, and it should be available in all of the different podcatchers, so actually

0:52:37 Thomas: Very nice yeah yeah search that out, everybody, that, that's delightful, uh, I hope that uh, some people will go form a, form a social relationship with you and then they can message you things that you just said and then you didn't say them you know wonder what they're talking about

0:53:03 Lindsey: It's funny my husband says that yeah no my husband says that he actually feels weird now because he listens and he feels like he also has a parasocial relationship with me so it's weird gosh I can't even begin to imagine I think so too it's not me it's podcast me that's

0:53:09 Thomas: Oh yeah well what's what's the ethics there yeah technically cheating I think no I'm just kidding oh good times thanks so much for coming on uh check out this show we're samepaige and uh thanks again for taking us through that that was really fascinating

0:53:30 Lindsey: Thank you

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