by David Levy
4. Social Influences
General social norms usually have a significant effect on falling in love, by screening out at an early stage some possible candidates for affection. A simple example is age—it is a social exception rather than the norm for someone to fall in love with a person who is very much older than oneself, so even if someone finds a much older person interesting or attractive, the thought will already be in their mind, “What would people think about me if I pursue a relationship with this person or accept their advances?” Similarly, some cultures screen out many candidates for affection on racial grounds, with the result that a couple who might otherwise be candidates for falling in love will often eschew any form of relationship because one or both of them knows that it would be unacceptable in their culture. As Ayala Pines explains, “social norms reward people who follow the norm and punish those who deviate, as, for example, when friends and relatives shun or express outright criticism of an unsuitable, potential partner.”7 Pines’s comment points to another way in which social norms are often influential—the social approval or disapproval of those in one’s own social network, especially one’s friends, can be an influence on whether or not one falls in love with a particular person, even if these influences are not culturally or racially biased.
5. Filling Needs
One of the stronger reasons for falling in love is need—the need for intimacy, for closeness, for sexual gratification, for a family. In some cases the need can be for recognition from others—a gain in status, garnered as a result of having acquired a trophy partner. So when someone says “I love you,” what they might actually mean is “I need you,” their subconscious hiding from them the true reason for the feeling they have developed for the object of their “love.”
6. Arousal/Unusualness
The situation in which one meets a potential love object can have a significant effect on whether a feeling of attraction develops. If one is aroused, even in a negative way, by the situation itself, that arousal can have a positive effect on one’s feelings of attraction. Danger is one well-known example of this phenomenon.*
7. Specific Cues
The object of one’s love might possess some particular characteristic that creates an unusually strong feeling of initial attraction, such as a voice that one finds very appealing, or a physical feature, like the face, the eyes, or the shape of the body. These cases often give rise to “love at first sight.”
8. Readiness for Entering a Relationship
Some emotional states make us much more susceptible to falling in love than do others. If we are suffering from particularly low self-esteem because our partner has just dumped us, we are ripe for starting a relationship “on the rebound.” And a temporarily lowered level of self-esteem for other reasons can similarly be assuaged by a new relationship. Here again there is a need, but this time it is a need for the relationship itself rather than for what it might bring us.
9. Being Alone with the Love Object, or Exclusiveness
This is a stronger form of the factors described in the earlier section “How Proximity and Repeated Exposure Affect Falling in Love.” Being alone with the object of one’s love is likely to enhance those feelings of love and encourage any feelings of reciprocity that might exist in one’s love object.
10. Mystery
A person who carries an air of mystery or intrigue will be often be found to be romantically appealing. Similarly, a mysterious situation can have a catalytic effect on a relationship in much the same way as danger does.
While these ten reasons are still fresh in your mind, just pause for a moment and ask yourself this question: Which of these reasons, if any, would not apply if the object of one’s potential love were not another human being but instead a robot? You might ponder this question until we discuss it further in chapter 4.
Falling in Love on the Internet
Falling in love via the Internet has become a widespread social phenomenon. This is the modern-day, vastly speeded-up version of falling in love with a pen pal you’ve never met, which sometimes used to happen in the days when the postal system rather than the Internet was the most popular method of written communication between those in faraway locations. An interesting aspect of Internet relationships, as with pen-pal relationships, is that some of what are normally regarded as being the most important factors in the initial attraction of one person to another—such as looks, age, and voice—are entirely missing from the initial stage of most Internet relationships.* Those involved in Internet chat and Internet flirting are usually hidden from view, hidden from hearing, and able to give the impression of being any age they wish, with the result that relationships sometimes develop between couples who, if they saw each other in a restaurant or across a dance floor or a room at a party, might never have shared a second glance. As a cartoon in New Yorker magazine explained, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”
This invisibility brings an important extra element to the flirting process on the Internet, as explained by Deb Levine, author of The Joy of Cybersex: A Guide for Creative Lovers and the developer and therapist of the Columbia University Web site Go Ask Alice, where she dispenses advice on safe sex and healthy relationships.
The online world gives those people who do not fit a stereotypical model of human beauty a chance to be Don Juans and Carmen Mirandas and have an equal opportunity to be found desirable. For those considered beautiful by societal standards, it gives them a chance to be attractive to others for reasons other than their physical qualities (i.e., intellect, charm, interests, etc.).8
Being attractive to others is, of course, one of the keys to a successful relationship, and it will be important for a human involved in a developing relationship with a robot to be shown and to believe that the robot is attracted to them. The fact that attraction for reasons of intellect, charm, and the like occurs so often in Internet relationships is a strong indication that humans will be convinced by their robot’s indications of attraction and love for them. There is little point in programming a robot to tell obviously plain or ugly people that it finds them physically attractive, as the robot will lose credibility from any human partner who has the wit to detect the lie. But there is considerable point in programming a robot to search out, comment favorably on, and interact with those characteristics of the human partner that could reasonably be described as positive attributes. If the robot is programmed (or learns) to virtually enjoy the same tastes in literature, music, sports, and so on as its human partner and to appreciate its partner’s personality, then it will be convincing in its appreciation for its human, and this appreciation will act as a catalyst in developing the relationship further.
Levine draws other parallels between attraction in Internet relationships and attraction in face-to-face relationships, parallels that can extend also to human-robot relationships. We have seen that proximity is an important factor in promoting attraction. Levine points out that
In the online world, proximity is not defined by physical location, but instead by a particular chat room, message board (Internet forum), listserv** or type of Internet software that users have in common. In order for people to meet online, they have to be in the same chat room at the same time (closest approximation to “real life” proximity), post messages on the same message board….
And she recommends, for those seeking someone on the Internet who might find them attractive, that
your best bet is to find a community that revolves around a subject in which you are interested (for instance, sports, health, children, books, movies) and spend time there on a regular basis.
Thus Levine demonstrates that the Internet version of proximity is also a means to take advantage of another of the principal causes of falling in love—similarity. The very nature of the Internet facilitates the process of finding similarity, allowing someone who is passionate about origami or cross-country skiing to discover a host of like-minded candidates for their affections, candidates for whom they them
selves might be considered emotionally attractive. The technology of the Internet focuses the attentions of other origami aficionados on the user who is seeking affection, providing the opportunity for any of them who wish to do so to flirt.
The human-robot relationship takes this process of finding similarity an important step further. Not only will the robot be programmed and learn to have similar interests and other characteristics as its human owner, it can also be guaranteed by its programming to find its owner emotionally attractive. Instead of a user visiting a Web site where there will almost certainly be many like-minded people, but with the risk that none of them might find the user attractive, the user’s robot will be both like-minded and attracted to the user.
Those who develop strong emotional ties on the Internet, leading to romantic relationships, constitute only a relatively small percentage of the online population. But because of the total size of the online population, even a modest minority can represent several million people. Nicola Döring quotes a telephone survey conducted in the United States in 1995, in which 14 percent of those questioned and who had access to the Internet reported having become acquainted with people on the net whom they would refer to as “friends,” though no distinction was drawn between romantic and nonromantic relationships. Döring also refers to surveys aimed at people who were active in newsgroups—within this category the portion of those who maintained close relationships on the Internet was 61 percent (of which 53 percent were friendships and 8 percent were romantic relationships). The reason for the significantly higher percentage among the newsgroup members is that because a newsgroup is highly focused to a specific interest, its members are by definition similar, in that they share an interest in the group’s topic. Thus a similarity of interests is a powerful factor in the generation of romantic attachment via the virtual world of the Internet, just as it is in the physical world.
The data referred to by Döring is already several years old, and since then the statistics have shot up. Cyberromance is an experience that has grown phenomenally within the Internet population, an experience whose popularity is still growing rapidly. Esther Gwinnell, in her 2004 book Online Seductions, points out that online relationships, not only those formed on matchmaking sites but also those that start in chat rooms and through instant messaging, have become so common that many psychotherapists in the United States now devote their practices solely to dealing with the problems caused by cyberromances. These problems include detrimental effects on preexisting relationships, especially in marriages where a spouse will often refuse to admit that a cyberromance constitutes a form of cheating.
On the positive side, Deb Levine points out that
for some people, online attraction and relationships will become a valid substitute for more traditional relationships. Those who are housebound or rurally isolated and those who are ostracized from society for any number of different reasons may turn to online relationships as their sole source of companionship.
2 Loving Our Pets
The Nature of Human-Pet Relationships
Pet ownership is known to date back to Paleolithic times. A twelve-thousand-year-old tomb, found in Ein Mallaha in northern Israel, contained the remains of an elderly woman buried together with those of a puppy dog. The woman’s left hand was placed so that it rested on the dog’s shoulder, providing visual evidence for a special relationship between early humans and the animal world, which is very rare in an archaeological site. Simon Davis, a member of the discovery team, explains, “This case at Mallaha is quite clearly a rather special and almost unique example of an animal skeleton buried with a human. So I think this really points to almost a kind of emotional or affectionate relationship between the old woman and the puppy.”1
Relationships between pets and humans have evolved considerably from the times when the roles of pets were principally as workers. Cats were originally brought into homes in many countries because of their penchant for catching mice; dogs have long been employed as hunting partners and house guards; while horses, in addition to being the fastest mode of transport for thousands of years, have also been given a variety of jobs that involve pulling heavy objects such as coaches and plowshares. But just as robots have evolved from assembly-line machines to companions for the elderly, so pets have also evolved into our companions.
Many people own pets, and a significant proportion of pet owners love their pets, spending considerable amounts of money on their food, health care, and sometimes their grooming.* In the United States, it is not at all uncommon for pets to be dressed in designer fashions, enrolled in day-care centers, given kidney transplants (and other high-tech operations) at a cost of approximately $6,500 per kidney, and to be laid to rest in pet cemeteries. In addition, pet owners put up with all sorts of inconveniences contrived by their pets, as they scratch the furniture, claw the carpets and bedding, and leave smelly deposits on the floors. Given these disadvantages of pet ownership, it seems clear that the level of attachment between pet owners and their animals is extremely high. Edward Rynearson explains this on the basis that “the human and pet are significant attachment figures for one another. Under normal circumstances they share complimentary attachment because of mutual need and response.”2
In a paper aptly entitled “Why Do People Love Their Pets?” John Archer, a psychologist at the University of Central Lancashire, discusses the reasons people keep pets, concentrating on the most popular animals—cats and dogs. Archer’s findings include the observation that in Western societies the relationship between humans and pets has intensified since the Second World War. A survey conducted by the American Pet Products Association in 2004 bears this out, indicating that 63 percent of U.S. households had at least one pet, comprising 77 million cats; 65 million dogs; 17 million birds; 16 million “pocket pets” such as rabbits, ferrets, and rodents; and even 9 million reptiles, figures that are steadily increasing by some 3 to 5 percent annually.
Several research psychologists have carried out systematic studies of love for pets, mostly positing this love in terms of attachment. Aaron Katcher led a 1983 study that investigated various common indicators of affection for pet dogs, such as talking to the dog frequently. A survey conducted among the clients of a veterinary clinic found that 67 percent had a photograph of the dog, 73 percent allowed it to sleep in their bedroom, and 80 percent believed that the pet was sensitive to the owner’s feelings. In a study by Psychology Today magazine of more than 13,000 pet owners, 25 percent celebrated their pet’s birthday. And a study by Victoria Voith found that 97 percent of 1,500 pet owners in a survey confessed to talking to their cat or dog at least once a day, while 99 percent of the owners considered their pet to be a member of the family. In other studies the “member of the family” figures have varied, from 68 percent up to 93 percent.
Most children talk to their pets and feel that their pets reciprocate their own love. Many adults, too, form strong emotional attachments to their pets, some insisting that their animal is “almost human” (despite ample evidence to the contrary provided by the pet’s nonhuman appearance), and some deriving even more satisfaction from their pet relationships than they do from their social relationships with people.
The Anthropomorphism of Pets
Much of the research into human-pet relationships has been based on anecdotal evidence and on observations by psychologists and vets. But it is also interesting and important to consider how pet owners themselves perceive and evaluate their relationships with their animals. By gaining an understanding of the owners’ perceptions of such relationships, we can better assess how human relationships with robots are likely to develop.
The pioneering research into relationships between pets and their owners was led by Julia Berryman in the mid-1980s. Berryman’s team found that while there was a wide variation between the pet owners in the study as to the importance they attached to their relationships with their pets, one common factor was dominant: Pet owners perceive their relationships with their pet
s as being more similar by far to their relationships with children, particularly in those cases where the child was their own, than they were to their relationships with their spouse or partner or with a friend. The reasons appear to be that children and pets bring similar emotional rewards, and both children and pets depend on adults—their “owners”—especially for playing games and having fun. And just as playing games and having fun are shared activities that bind both human-human and human-pet relationships, other shared activities—even boring, routine activities—tend to bind both types of relationship.
The human tendency to project feelings and thoughts onto animals would seem to be a pervasive one. It is probably based on what developmental psychologists call “the theory of mind,” the ability to impute a mental state to others. Most humans attribute others with having minds—that is, feelings, beliefs, and intentions different from their own. But in making such attributions, these humans tend to over-attribute, and in the case of animals this leads to anthropomorphism. From the Greek words anthropos, meaning “man,” and morphe, meaning “form” or “structure,” anthropomorphism is a tendency to regard and describe objects, animals, and even natural phenomena such as the wind and the sea in human terms, attributing human characteristics to them with the intention of rationalizing their actions. Anything that bears some similarities to a human being, and with which a person has repeated interactions, is treated as if it has a mind. Thus an animal, alive, affectionate, and warm-blooded, comes to be treated in certain ways as though it were human (alive, affectionate, and warm-blooded), leading many people to interact with their pets as if they were humans and to form relationships with their pets that come to be like those formed with humans.
Pet owners extend this anthropomorphism toward their animals in other ways, including giving them individual names, feeding them from their own plates at mealtimes, taking them to a medical practitioner when they’re ill, celebrating their birthdays, allowing them to sleep on the owners’ beds, and even on occasions dressing them up like humans. By such actions the owners cement the perception of a humanlike relationship with their pets, but clearly, since pets are unable to carry on a conversation with their owners, the form of love felt by a pet owner for their animal is much closer to the form of love that humans feel for babies than it is to a feeling of romantic love.
