A research from University of Helsinki in Finland finds that people may consider paying to have sex with robots more acceptable than paying for sex with a human sex worker.
In a sample of 432 participants, the Finnish researchers made a four-part experiment using a sci-fi story to set up a scenario for the survey’s participants to question them on ideas of ‘moral character.’
Both stories featured a man visiting a brothel on a trip in Europe in 2035. Here, the main character in one story was using a brothel occupied by humans sex workers, and with a second experiment featuring a person entering a brothel with robots as sex workers.
The four difference were: one man was single, the other man was married. Both brothels advertised: "You cannot tell our robots from real women" or "All our workers are real women."
Then participants were then asked for their opinions on the story itself.
With the stories end with the man paying for services, the university found that attitudes towards sex robots is gaining traction across the academic world.
For one reason, the participants viewed the married man going to a brothel more harshly than a single person. However, they also saw the act of sleeping with a robot was "better" than sleeping with a human sex worker for both single and married individuals.
In another test, there was the case where a woman was the protagonist of the story. The results were also similar, despite most respondents viewed the woman in slightly less favor than the man.
While the findings of this study are far from definitive and may not represent the truth in the real world, it’s showing an insight on how people's attitudes toward sex are measured by scientists, and that people's thoughts about sex robots are somehow changing.
On their paper titled Moral Psychology of Sex Robots: an experimental study -- How Pathogen Disgust is associated with interhuman sex but not interandroid sex, the Finnish researchers said that:
"We ran two experimental studies (Ns = 172 and 260) where we compared people’s reactions to variants of stories about a person visiting a bordello. Our results show that paying for the services of a sex robot is condemned less harshly than paying for the services of a human sex worker, especially if the payer is married."
"We have for the first time experimentally confirmed that people are somewhat unsure about whether or not using a sex robot while in a committed monogamous relationship should be considered as infidelity. We also shed light on the psychological factors influencing attitudes towards sex robots, including disgust sensitivity and interest in science fiction."
"Our results indicate that sex with a robot is indeed genuinely considered as sex, and a sex robot is genuinely seen as a robot; thus, we show that standard research methods on sexuality and robotics are applicable also in research on sex robotics."