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.

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........

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