establish a relationship with their sex dolls

 A scoping review is "a form of knowledge synthesis that deals with an exploratory love doll that aims to identify key concepts, types of evidence, and gaps in research related to a defined area or field through the systematic searching, selecting, and summarizing of existing to map knowledge".

Since the stock of scientific literature on male sex dolls and sex robots has not yet been comprehensively reviewed and has a broad and heterogeneous character that does not open up to a more detailed systematic review, a scoping review is of particular use. Our approach follows the current methodological guidelines for conducting systematic scoping reviews, in particular the PRISMA ScR checklist.

The majority of the participants (90%) identified as male, the Lifelike Sex Doll orientation of most participants was heterosexual (88%). The majority of respondents were not in a relationship (45% were single and 13% were divorced). Participants who identified themselves as "Other" consisted of one divorced individual who was in a long-distance relationship, two individuals who considered themselves to be in a relationship with their dolls, and one who described himself as "married" to his doll .

The next theme that emerged most often concerned the comparison of sex doll and human relationships. This has typically been addressed in two ways: the perceived deficiencies of real people and the perceived deficiencies of the self or inability to have real human-human relationships. Some people noted that real-life relationships posed significant problems for them and were too risky or undesirable.

These participants explained that they found themselves in doll relationships as a byproduct of their unwillingness to engage with real people. This has been typified by statements such as: "In real life, women have fewer redeeming qualities. Relationships with dolls are better."