Being horny may make people more willing to have sex with robots, finds a somewhat obvious but interesting study into attitudes toward sex robots. The study, from researchers at Concordia University, found that men would be more open to sex robots than women would be, and that sexual arousal is a strong influence on whether they would consider having sex with them or not. It turns out humans will do anything not to be horny.
“Robots designed to elicit sexual arousal are coming,” write the authors.
“Sexual arousal can increase our willingness to engage in risky or unconventional sexual behaviors. However, researchers have yet to examine whether this effect extends to robots. Hence, this study provides the first empirical evidence that state sexual arousal can increase our willingness to engage erotically with robots.”
While sex robots are undoubtedly coming (if they haven’t already), no research has actually explored whether sexual arousal will open humans up to their use.
In order to do so, researchers recruited a cohort of 321 people over the age of 18 through the internet and word-of-mouth and asked them to complete a two-part online survey. First, they filled out how likely they would be to do various things with a robot, including being friends with one, being in a relationship with one, and getting intimate with one.
One week later, they were shown a 10-minute sexually explicit video and asked to repeat the survey, with the researchers expecting to see a difference in how they responded once aroused.
On almost all accounts, sexual arousal increased the willingness of participants to engage in sexual activity and have romantic (or platonic) relationships with a robot – the only metric that didn’t go up was whether they were willing to love a robot.
Men were found to be more likely to give a robot a chance compared to women when it came to getting intimate with them, but there were no differences between genders when it came to whether they would befriend or fall in love with a robot.
The study is not perfect in its design. It utilizes a small sample size of ethnically similar people, of which most were educated and white, and the fact that it is a self-reported, online survey leaves the chance for inaccuracies. It does, however, mark the first study to delve into the topic, so future studies can look to improve on the design.
The study is published in The Journal of Sex Research.
Source Link: Being Horny Increases Likelihood People (Particularly Men) Will Sleep With Robots