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Being socially excluded seriously threatens individuals’ need to belong and emotional well-being. This article investigates to what extent different coping strategies help overcome these detrimental effects: thinking about real-life friends/enemies (i.e., orthosocial relationships, OSRs) and thinking about (dis)liked media characters (i.e., parasocial relationships, PSRs). Across three experiments (NPilot = 129, NStudy1 = 132, NStudy2 = 855), we first induced social exclusion using a virtual ball-tossing game. Afterward, we manipulated different relationship types and valences and compared them to non- or less-relational control conditions. As hypothesized, belongingness and emotional well-being increased from pre- to post-coping. This effect was fully mediated by perceived relationship closeness to the respective person(a). Highlighting that PSRs represent more than surrogates (i.e., secondary replacements of OSR), both relationship types did not differ in coping effectiveness. Moreover, positive relationships were more effective in fulfilling both coping goals than negative ones.

In the last 10 years, many canonical findings in the social sciences appear unreliable. This so-called “replication crisis” has spurred calls for open science practices, which aim to increase the reproducibility, replicability, and generalizability of findings. Communication research is subject to many of the same challenges that have caused low replicability in other fields. As a result, we propose an agenda for adopting open science practices in Communication, which includes the following seven suggestions: (1) publish materials, data, and code; (2) preregister studies and submit registered reports; (3) conduct replications; (4) collaborate; (5) foster open science skills; (6) implement Transparency and Openness Promotion Guidelines; and (7) incentivize open science practices. Although in our agenda we focus mostly on quantitative research, we also reflect on open science practices relevant to qualitative research. We conclude by discussing potential objections and concerns associated with open science practices.