Listen to this articleDr. Craig Harper on the Psychology of Sex Doll Ownership | Interview for SavageLoveCast
In this interview, Dr. Craig Harper talks to Dan Savage for the SavageLoveCast about new research into the science and psychology of sex doll ownership. We discuss why people might own dolls, and whether social stigma plays out in new data from people who own dolls.
Subtitles:
all right we’re going to take a quick
break from your calls because every once
in a while we like to invite researchers
or scientists onto the show to share
with us the results of a new scientific
study that they’ve published for a
little segment we call what you got
[Music]
joining us for this what you got dr
craig harper a senior lecturer in
psychology at nottingham trent
university in the uk hey dr harper how
are you
hi i’m good thanks how are you really
good thanks for jumping on the phone so
uh what do you got
uh we’ve been doing some uh some really
cool research actually i think um into
sex doll ownership so
um i guess we’re aware of kind of lots
of people who are having lots of kind of
uh emotive responses to things like sex
dolls and um associating it with risk
and having this idea of kind of people
who own sex balls being sexually deviant
and things like that
but there’s no evidence for any of this
there’s nothing at all we’ve got lots of
people advocating for kind of
criminalization things like that but
nothing no data whatsoever
so what we decided to do was to to test
some of these ideas we had three
different models that we were looking at
so
is it possible that sex dolls are
protective against sexual risk do they
increase sexual risk or are they just
as they’re described sex toys that
people use for sexual gratification
sexual enhancement and things like that
so we um yeah we’ve been testing some of
those ideas out with sexual owners and
comparing those scores to people who
don’t own sex dolls okay so quickly let
me jump in want to clarify uh the things
that people emote about a lot when they
talk about sex dolls are that they’re
going to contribute to
you know patriarchal misogynistic
attitudes that women are objects that
should do what you want them to do and
be right where you want them to be and
be used exactly how you want to use them
and that sex dolls if they take off and
they really you know we talk about sex
dolls a lot more than any of us i think
have encountered them in the wild but if
they were to take off it would make an
already bleak situation for women
culturally sexually romantically even
bleaker
that’s what you meant by the emoting
people are doing about sex dolls
exactly yeah so that’s the um that’s the
key kind of driver i guess that’s
driving a lot of social discussions
about this but like i said there’s no
there’s no data that supports any of
that there’s no um research that that
supports that
and what a lot of these arguments are
doing is they’re arguing like you say
from emotion they’re thinking about kind
of the situation that women find
themselves in at the moment and think
about what the kind of slippery slope
could be if these dolls take off well
it’s a situation women have been in for
millennia and it’s a situation that
women today have you know for the last
century have fought really hard
to uh make less bad and people women men
myself included don’t want to see things
get worse although that does seem to be
the motto of the 21st century things get
worse
all right so what did you find in your
research
uh well i guess i i suppose the
interesting thing really is that we
found very little so we
compared the scores like i said to of
sex doll owners we had 158
sex doll owners and we recruited a
comparison group of 135 people who don’t
own sex dolls these are all men and we
were looking at whether they differed on
things like their level of sexual
fantasizing what they fantasize about
their personality traits how well they
function emotionally their attachment
styles
but importantly how they view women and
do they have these things called offense
supportive cognitions these kind of
pro-criminal attitudes that might be
associated at least theoretically with
uh with sexual offending and and like i
say in the main we found very few
differences we did see
the interestingly that people who own
sex dolls were less likely to report
being aroused by sexually aggressive
scenarios so we take that as an
indication of the literature as well
takes that as indication
of them being less likely to act on any
potential kind of offense supportive
fantasies that they might have but
interestingly people who didn’t own sex
dolls also had the higher levels of uh
beastophyllic fantasy so people who
don’t own sex dolls seem to have
slightly higher levels of
fantasies around kind of coercive sex so
again we’re seeing this idea potentially
and this is all kind of potentially at
the moment because this is relatively
small sample sizes but an initial look
at doll ownership of sex dolls being
maybe protective against sexual
aggression in terms of personality again
we found very few differences people who
own sex dolls were more likely to have
obsessive compulsive personality traits
so they have this kind of desire for
control or for order maybe and that
might be indicative of the fact that a
lot of the guys that were in our sex
doll owner sample had really poor
quality past relationships and we’ve
also got some qualitative data actually
some interview data
that seems to suggest that people seek
out sex dolls as
a form of sexual outlet a lot of the
time because of these past negative
experiences with with uh relationships
with with women we did also find that
men who own sex dolls have lower levels
of sexual self-esteem as well so
again kind of tapping into this idea of
poor quality
sexual histories may be kind of driving
people into using sex dolls
or owning sex dolls but we didn’t find
any evidence whatsoever that sex dolls
increase levels of sexual aggression
risk
and you did find that in your control
group in the sample of men who didn’t
own sex dolls
more evidence of sexually aggressive
attitudes or
shitty shittier men were were in the
average in the media well
i i i guess that would be one way of
putting it so we should all go out there
we should be looking for guys women
should be looking for guys who own sex
dolls because they’re the safer bat well
the one the one thing i would flag is
that that particular variable was not
significantly different between the two
groups there was a slight difference but
but statistically indistinguishable so
i’d be i wouldn’t necessarily be saying
to women that should be going out
finding guys with sex dolls that
wouldn’t be the case but uh but
certainly from a from a policy
perspective from a kind of social
discussion perspective the idea that
dolls increase sexual aggression risk
doesn’t seem to be evident in our data
okay i mean there’s so much to think
about and attempt to unpack here
you know my hunch you know one of the
things when we talk about sex dolls
we’re also talking about sex robots and
usually that discussion about the coming
of the sex robots which always seems to
be 20 years 30 years out on the horizon
that gets sort of rolled into the
discussion of the sex styles that are on
the market
now
and
the attitude often is you know this is
going to take the place of
human relationships um that people might
have but my feeling you know one of my
takes on the coming of the sex robots is
it’s going to make a kind of
relationship possible for a lot of
people who are socially at a
disadvantage or socially maladapted in
some way not that they’re violent not
that they’re
aggressive or want to harm or control
women but just there are people out
there who want partners who can’t find
them who’ve tried and failed and it’s a
miserable experience for them and
this may be an outlet a way for someone
to have a partner who might not
otherwise have a partner and that seems
to be
you know that hunch of mind seems to be
borne out a little bit by your data or
by what you found
yeah definitely um so that does seem to
be the case in our well so there’s
there’s hints of that in our
quantitative data in this survey data um
there’s much more of that actually on in
our interview data so that that research
is currently being kind of reviewed at
journal so that was led by
my colleague rebecca lewsley um but
we’re
we’re seeing evidence of that in the in
the interview data as well so kind of
themes around kind of seeing deficits in
in themselves particularly among doll
owners in terms of interacting with
women but also seeing deficits in
in other people so thinking about kind
of what they have in their mind as being
the ideal relationship and and kind of
having living partners maybe not living
up to those expectations
me may be a driver for for some of these
guys in seeking sex dog ownership and
what i would say is that it’s really
important for us to not think about sex
doll owners as
kind of one group there are lots of
different motivators for why people own
or use sex dolls obviously for for a lot
of people for the vast majority of
people um they’ll be using these or
owning these items for sexual
gratification for others like you’ve
kind of alluded to it will be about
relationships about emotional support
for others we’ve got quite a lot of
evidence actually about some people just
owning sex dolls to have someone around
so not necessarily having a relationship
with that doll or having a pseudo
relationship with that doll but just to
have someone around equally for things
like
photography it seems to be quite common
for people to have
dolls for kind of artistic reasons as
well
so i think we have this idea in our mind
this kind of heuristic view of
why do people own sex dolls and we see
this through a kind of i don’t know a
deviant sexuality kind of lens where
actually there’s a multi-faceted there
are multifaceted reasons for people
owning these kinds of dolls it does seem
to me that if you regarded sextile as a
sex toy for men
that there are sometimes there’s
sometimes even in sex positive
communities even among people are
comfortable with
sex toys in general there’s this stigma
attached to sex toys
that you [ __ ]
a flashlight or
you know
an orifice and you know what a sextile
is is a flashlight attached to
a mannequin and
even among women i know who are
comfortable with the idea of there being
insertion toys for women vibrators
dildos they’re very uncomfortable around
the idea of there being insertion toys
for men that a fleshlight is somehow
inherently
creepier or grosser or more disgusting
for a person to use than
an insertable
vibrating dildo
and i find that disconnect uh and that
discomfort among some fasting but
actually we wanted two more questions
before i let you go and you’ve been very
generous with your time thank you where
did you find the sex doll owners who are
willing to participate in the study
so it’s a really good question there are
lots of different communities online um
of guys who who own sex dolls we we were
really keen not to identify people so
we’re uh with our kind of forums we were
very clear that we wouldn’t name forums
publicly of uh where we found these
these individuals because
naturally they are quite kind of
protective about their their identities
but there are kind of relatively high
profile forums online that you can kind
of
ask people to take part in this kind of
of research and and actually because of
the the stigma that is around sex doll
ownership
they are a little bit sometimes kind of
hesitant i guess we’ve tried really hard
to develop some of these relationships
with
uh with guys on forums really trying to
kind of learn what they’re about and why
they’re owning sex dolls and
and kind of really trying to to to tell
their story i guess as well as the story
that society is is trying to tell about
them and i think that that kind of
involvement of guys who use these these
sex dolls is really going to be
important as we kind of progress this
research over the next couple of years
so inevitably when you have these
conversations about sex dolls uh one of
the things that comes up is
sex dolls you know lumps of latex or
polystyrene or whatever that look like a
child
child sex doll
that makes people insanely uncomfortable
that makes me uncomfortable
the
other thing that makes people
uncomfortable is when you
ask you know if
pedophiles were less likely to rape
children if sex dolls were available
that looked like children
would that not be
for the good
as uncomfortable as the ideal of a sex
now that looks like a child makes all of
us
have you thought about that are you
doing any research in that area
uh we have yeah we do have data on on
childlike dolls um
i’m hesitant to talk about the the
results at the moment because we are
still having those data reviewed so we
do have a we do have a preprint if
people want to follow me on
on twitter i’m more than happy to to
share that i’ve shared that that
pre-print relatively recently actually
it sounds like you’re still collecting
your thoughts on it um but will you
please come back after that paper is out
100 yeah
all right where can people find you
online to learn more about your research
and where can people find the paper that
you’ve just released on sex dolls uh
well i guess the best way to uh to find
me online is through twitter so i’m at
craigharper19 that’s quickharper199
um and the paper on sex dolls is
published now in the journal of sex
research so if you go to their website
it’s available open access you just go
to their website search for sex doll
owners and psychology and you’ll find
our paper on the search bar dr craig
harper senior lecturer in psychology at
nottingham trent university in the
united kingdom thank you so much dr
harper for getting on the phone today
that was a fascinating conversation
thanks very much
