Emotional, sexual and behavioral correlates of attitudes toward sex robots: Results of an online survey

Abstract

Understanding people’s attitudes toward sex robots will be essential to facilitate this technology’s likely assimilation into human relationships in a way that maximizes benefit and minimizes conflict within the privacy of people’s bedrooms. This online survey was developed to investigate attitudes toward sex robots. Questions were chosen to explore a variety of emotional, behavioral, and sexual variables that could potentially be pertinent to individual’s receptivity to sex with robots. There were 376 respondents, 84.1% of which were heterosexual. Self-reports of depression, social anxiety, attention deficit disorder, and Asperger’s spectrum all correlated positively with receptivity toward sex robots. Challenges with monogamy, more lifetime sex partners, higher frequency of masturbation, more pornography consumption, greater consumption of alcohol and marijuana, and more frequent use of video games also all correlated positively with receptivity toward sex robots. Curiously, receptivity toward sex robots correlated positively with both the experience of sexual pleasure with human partners and with the experience of anxiety during sex with a human partner. It is our belief that research in this area is paramount to assist psychologists, anthropologists, roboticists, and couples in navigating the intimate challenges of the future.