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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...

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Autores principales: Wood, Ian B., Varela, Pedro L., Bollen, Johan, Rocha, Luis M., Gonçalves-Sá, Joana
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
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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.
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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
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