Cargando…
Human Sexual Cycles are Driven by Culture and Match Collective Moods
Human reproduction does not happen uniformly throughout the year and what drives human sexual cycles is a long-standing question. The literature is mixed with respect to whether biological or cultural factors best explain these cycles. The biological hypothesis proposes that human reproductive cycle...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2017
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5740080/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29269945 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-18262-5 |
_version_ | 1783287975915814912 |
---|---|
author | Wood, Ian B. Varela, Pedro L. Bollen, Johan Rocha, Luis M. Gonçalves-Sá, Joana |
author_facet | Wood, Ian B. Varela, Pedro L. Bollen, Johan Rocha, Luis M. Gonçalves-Sá, Joana |
author_sort | Wood, Ian B. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Human reproduction does not happen uniformly throughout the year and what drives human sexual cycles is a long-standing question. The literature is mixed with respect to whether biological or cultural factors best explain these cycles. The biological hypothesis proposes that human reproductive cycles are an adaptation to the seasonal (hemisphere-dependent) cycles, while the cultural hypothesis proposes that conception dates vary mostly due to cultural factors, such as holidays. However, for many countries, common records used to investigate these hypotheses are incomplete or unavailable, biasing existing analysis towards Northern Hemisphere Christian countries. Here we show that interest in sex peaks sharply online during major cultural and religious celebrations, regardless of hemisphere location. This online interest, when shifted by nine months, corresponds to documented human births, even after adjusting for numerous factors such as language and amount of free time due to holidays. We further show that mood, measured independently on Twitter, contains distinct collective emotions associated with those cultural celebrations. Our results provide converging evidence that the cyclic sexual and reproductive behavior of human populations is mostly driven by culture and that this interest in sex is associated with specific emotions, characteristic of major cultural and religious celebrations. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5740080 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-57400802018-01-03 Human Sexual Cycles are Driven by Culture and Match Collective Moods Wood, Ian B. Varela, Pedro L. Bollen, Johan Rocha, Luis M. Gonçalves-Sá, Joana Sci Rep Article Human reproduction does not happen uniformly throughout the year and what drives human sexual cycles is a long-standing question. The literature is mixed with respect to whether biological or cultural factors best explain these cycles. The biological hypothesis proposes that human reproductive cycles are an adaptation to the seasonal (hemisphere-dependent) cycles, while the cultural hypothesis proposes that conception dates vary mostly due to cultural factors, such as holidays. However, for many countries, common records used to investigate these hypotheses are incomplete or unavailable, biasing existing analysis towards Northern Hemisphere Christian countries. Here we show that interest in sex peaks sharply online during major cultural and religious celebrations, regardless of hemisphere location. This online interest, when shifted by nine months, corresponds to documented human births, even after adjusting for numerous factors such as language and amount of free time due to holidays. We further show that mood, measured independently on Twitter, contains distinct collective emotions associated with those cultural celebrations. Our results provide converging evidence that the cyclic sexual and reproductive behavior of human populations is mostly driven by culture and that this interest in sex is associated with specific emotions, characteristic of major cultural and religious celebrations. Nature Publishing Group UK 2017-12-21 /pmc/articles/PMC5740080/ /pubmed/29269945 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-18262-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2017 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Article Wood, Ian B. Varela, Pedro L. Bollen, Johan Rocha, Luis M. Gonçalves-Sá, Joana Human Sexual Cycles are Driven by Culture and Match Collective Moods |
title | Human Sexual Cycles are Driven by Culture and Match Collective Moods |
title_full | Human Sexual Cycles are Driven by Culture and Match Collective Moods |
title_fullStr | Human Sexual Cycles are Driven by Culture and Match Collective Moods |
title_full_unstemmed | Human Sexual Cycles are Driven by Culture and Match Collective Moods |
title_short | Human Sexual Cycles are Driven by Culture and Match Collective Moods |
title_sort | human sexual cycles are driven by culture and match collective moods |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5740080/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29269945 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-18262-5 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT woodianb humansexualcyclesaredrivenbycultureandmatchcollectivemoods AT varelapedrol humansexualcyclesaredrivenbycultureandmatchcollectivemoods AT bollenjohan humansexualcyclesaredrivenbycultureandmatchcollectivemoods AT rochaluism humansexualcyclesaredrivenbycultureandmatchcollectivemoods AT goncalvessajoana humansexualcyclesaredrivenbycultureandmatchcollectivemoods |