Not Only the Lonely—How Men Explicitly and Implicitly Evaluate the Attractiveness of Sex Robots in Comparison to the Attractiveness of Women, and Personal Characteristics Influencing This Evaluation

Abstract

While some theories, such as the Media Equation, suggest that men will evaluate sex robots to be attractive, other assumptions (e.g., biases of norm adherence) would contradict this hypothesis. Therefore, the present study aimed at empirically comparing men’s explicit and implicit evaluation of the (sexual) attractiveness of sex robots and women. At the same time, personal characteristics of the observer that might affect this evaluation were considered. An online survey (n = 229) and an affective priming experiment (n = 41) revealed that men rate women to be more attractive than robots if asked explicitly (=self-reported). However, this effect is not present when attractiveness is assessed implicitly (unbiased, directly). Moreover, affiliation-related traits such as loneliness, which have been assumed to be associated with the usage of sex dolls, are not related to the evaluation of attractiveness. Instead, a negative attitude towards robots is an important predictor.