December 2, 2022 - When a young man finds himself falling in love with a 300-year-old cyborg in the 2019 sci-fi film Alita: Battle Angel, they share the following exchange:
Cyborg (Alita) asks, "Does it bother you that I'm not human at all?"
"You are the kindest person I have ever met," replied the young Hugo.
Cinema is full of such examples, of humans being killed by non-humans. See also the 2013 film Her, in which Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with a virtual assistant voiced by Scarlett Johansson, and the 2014 science fiction film Ex Machina, in which a young programmer (Domhnall Gleeson) grows close to an artificial intelligence robot that meets a beautiful woman (Alicia Vikander).
But for many, the concept extends beyond the silver screen. An entire subculture in Japan is dedicated to romance video games (RPGs), in which players court a computer-generated person and form a relationship that some gamers describe as real. RVG games are played all over the world but are particularly popular with Japanese women (though there are plenty of games for men as well).
A stranger? Maybe unhealthy? No doubt many people would agree. But PhD psychologist Mayu Koike has a different perspective. At Hiroshima University, he and his colleagues are exploring whether such "virtual romantic relationships" can improve psychological well-being or even help people cope with the stress of real-world romance. So far, the answer to both questions is a tentative yes.
Koike, hopes that "people want to love and want to be loved, desires that can now be fulfilled through virtual agents."
Personalization — or putting human traits onto non-humans — is not new to psychology, but Quickie aims to apply the concept to help understand “virtual romance,” the romantic one between a human and a fictional partner There is a relationship.
In general, Koike says his studies have shown that if a person feels a connection with a "virtual agent," their mood improves—what psychologists call a "positive affect."
“People believe that playing RVG can improve their social skills, and our ongoing study also shows that players should engage in a romantic relationship with a virtual agent before committing to human relationships,” says Koike Not ready.
His most recent article, Being in Love: The Role of Anthropomorphism in Virtual Romantic Relationships, published in the British Journal of Social Psychology, describes three experiments looking at the effects of anthropomorphizing virtual partners.
The results were mixed. When the player embodies the agent, the relationship felt more authentic. They also felt better and were more likely to desire a real relationship with the agent. But in a final experiment in which 104 female gamers later met attractive male actors, there was no correlation between how the women viewed their imaginary relationship and how they interacted with the male actors.
However, this mood improvement is reason enough to study the process, as it has “strong potential to improve our relationships in the real world,” Koike says. Such research "could help reduce feelings of loneliness and improve well-being."
His latest paper builds on his 2020 study in PLoS One titled “What factors attract people to play romantic video games?”. These include human-like voice and even touch, which (rated G) is simulated in some games by using, say, a Wii controller to stroke someone’s hair, or a balance pad for a massage.
Koike notes that as technology evolves, and the quality of virtual agents improves, the prospects for virtual romance will improve. Such relationships can help satisfy the human need for love and being loved, or even serve as "practice tools for someone anxious about dating."
“We must continue to study how these relationships with virtual agents can affect relationships in the modern world,” she says.
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