The Communicative Construction of Care: Evidence for Subjectively Reciprocal Relations Between Humans and Machines

As artificial entities like sex dolls and robots are being used as sources of companionship, little is known about the communication of care in these contexts. Using a funneled serial interview design of three waves of semi-structured interviews with 29 sex doll and robot owners, our analysis revealed how participants experienced care as communicatively constructed. Findings indicated that participants willingly suspended disbelief and perceived a seemingly reciprocal form of care with their dolls and robots, marked by a high degree of controllability and dominance. Situated within the context of automating care labor, the findings make contributions to communication studies, social robotics, and human sexuality by documenting seemingly reciprocal experiences of care with hyperfeminized and hypersexualized machines. Practically, this study documents varied use cases of dolls and robots that capture the experience of care, suggesting the need for a more nuanced understanding of dolls and their impact on users.