This post is in response to
Will the Rise of Sex Robots Mean the End of Relationships?
By Glenn Geher Ph.D.
In a PT post, my colleague Glenn Geher shared some concerns expressed by clinical psychologist and sex therapist Marianne Brandon about possible negative fallout from the advent of sex robots. I agree that there is some cause for concern and that we ought to use evolutionary psychology to understand and deal with these concerns.
The Dangers of Supernormal Stimuli
Glenn correctly notes that such robots would constitute yet one more example of what evolutionary psychologists call a supernormal stimulus (a concept introduced by ethologist Niko Tinbergen). Human beings seem unable to stop creating new supernormal stimuli—bigger than real-life versions of things we enjoy. Those who manufacture and sell such supernormal products are getting rich. And the people who buy them are not complaining. At least not until they find themselves morbidly obese from eating Big Macs or unable to tear themselves away from pornography or video games, wasting hours of their lives, failing to meet their obligations at work, and missing out on every kind of normal, face-to-face human interaction. There is indeed a real danger here.
Glenn is also clearly correct in predicting that the major market for sex robots will be men. This means that it will be mostly men who are exploited by this new technology, just as males are currently exploited by the video game industry more often than females. (Of course, there are defenders of gender equality who are trying to increase female involvement in video games, which I am sure the industry is thrilled about.) So, men will be the primary unwitting victims of the sex robot revolution, although women will also suffer because some potential male partners will choose robots over human females.
What About Robots for the Involuntary Celibates (Incels)?
On the other hand, other things we know from evolutionary psychology suggest that the sex robot revolution might not be all bad. For example, evolutionary psychology tells us that successful mating is more difficult for males than females in the animal world. While virtually any female, regardless of her appearance and status, can get a male to mate with her, there are many males in many species who never mate in their entire lifetime.
One of the saddest movie scenes I’ve ever seen was in an animal behavior video about the Ugandan kob. A male kob must successfully defend his territory through displays of strength and agility and then wait for a female to enter his territory to have a chance at mating. The sad scene I remember was a shot of countless males who did what they were supposed to do, establishing their little circular territories by battling other males, but they were just standing in their circles, alone, because no females were interested in them. The narrator said that they lived their entire lives this way.
Given that many human males similarly just do not have what it takes to attract a female partner, can’t they at least have a sex robot? Sadly, this is unlikely to happen. The technology involved in sex robots is going to make them so expensive that only rich men will be able to afford them. This is ironic because rich men have the least trouble finding a mate and therefore have little need for sex robots. Glenn suggests that state-sponsored insurance might pay for sex robots in full for men who are diagnosed with sexual dysfunction. Even if that is true, that will not help men who are missing out on sex because they have too many unappealing characteristics.
Are Declining Marriage and Birth Rates a Problem or a Good Thing?
Glenn lists as another potential downside of sex robots a further decrease in marriage and birth rates. I’m not so sure this is a problem. For years, people screamed about overpopulation and called for zero population growth (ZPG). Now that we are achieving ZPG, people are worrying about it. Why? Haven’t human beings done enough damage to the climate and environment? Aren’t there enough hungry people in the world? Declining human birth rates sounds like a good idea to me. If sex robots help to prevent human overpopulation, this would be a positive rather than a negative consequence.
Effect of Robots on Intimate Relationships
Finally, Glenn shares Brandon’s concern that sex robots will weaken intimate relationships. Although he doesn’t explain why this might be true, I think I can infer the underlying argument. Because partners in a long-term relationship usually require a degree of mutual self-disclosure and emotional connection to have sex with each other, they are willing to make an effort to communicate, share, and consider their partner’s point of view. That can be a lot of work, especially for many men who lack these emotional intelligence and communication skills. It might be much easier to turn to a robot who is programmed to feign a deep affection for you without demanding a single bit of reciprocity. So, yes, sex robots might cause men who don’t want to work on their human relationships to bail and take the easy way out.
But is this necessarily a bad thing from an evolutionary point of view? The consequence of men who are not willing to work on their relationships opting out of mating is that their genes for reticence, inconsiderateness, and low empathy will be selected out of the population. Only men who are sensitive to their partners’ needs and willing to share and talk openly would be reproducing and passing on genes for those tendencies. At least from a woman’s point of view, sex robots could be a way of improving the male portion of the species over evolutionary time.