News Finding: "We didn't see a reversal in birth rate or online interest in sex trends between the Northern and Southern hemispheres -- and it didn't seem to matter how far people lived from the equator," Rocha said.
Paper Finding: In every country, valence yields a positive coefficient, while dominance a negative coefficient; thus the happier but less in-control the population mood is, the more sex-searches tend to increase in every country (Methods 10 and Supplementary Methods S2).
News Context: Because the seasons are reversed on opposites sides of the globe, and peak birth rates and online interest in sex did not change based on geography, the researchers concluded the relationship between these effects is unrelated to biological shifts caused by changes in daylight, temperature or food availability. "We didn't see a reversal in birth rate or online interest in sex trends between the Northern and Southern hemispheres -- and it didn't seem to matter how far people lived from the equator," Rocha said. "Rather, the study found culture -- measured through online mood -- to be the primary driver behind cyclic sexual and reproductive behavior in human populations."
Paper Context: We first observed that the weekly volume of sex-searches significantly correlates with the mean weekly sentiment derived from the three ANEW dimensions in a multiple linear regression (Supplementary Methods S2, Supplementary Table S10). In every country, valence yields a positive coefficient, while dominance a negative coefficient; thus the happier but less in-control the population mood is, the more sex-searches tend to increase in every country (Methods 10 and Supplementary Methods S2). Interestingly, while public sentiment displays a strong linear relationship with sex-search volume when all mood dimensions are considered, there is little correlation with each ANEW dimension on its own (Supplementary Table S11 ).However, the observed linear Figure 3 .