Researchers have found a strong correlation between being forward-looking and economic success.
People in wealthier nations are far more likely to search for information about the future compared with citizens of poorer states, a study of 45 billion Google search queries by University College London researchers has revealed. The study has been published in Nature.
"Our results are consistent with the intriguing possibility that there is a relationship between the economic success of a country and the information-seeking behaviour of its citizens online," the authors write.
The study reveals a “striking correlation” between a country’s per-capita gross domestic product “and its inhabitants’ predisposition to look forward.”
They used Google Trends to analyse search queries made in 45 countries in 2010. Their methodology for sifting past and future searches was to count how many 2010 searches included the term “2009″ and how many mentioned “2011.”
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| Image Source: Nature |
Counting year mentions is clearly an imperfect way to check feelings about the past and future, and to avoid statistical noise in the Google Trends data the study eliminated nations with less than 5 million Internet users – many of which will be at the poorer end of the GDP scale where the correlation may falter.
In order to see how "future oriented" each nation was, the team then worked out the ratio of the number of searches for 2011 to those for 2009. They called that ratio the "future orientation index" (FOI). When they checked these indices against the relative wealth of each nation - its per-capita GDP - as listed in the CIA World Factbook of July 2010, they found a strong correlation.
For instance, Russia (with 2010 GDP per capita at $15,900 in 2010) has a future orientation index of 0.6. Higher up the graph Italy ($30,100) has an FOI of 1.0. Even higher are France ($35,000), the UK ($35,900) and Germany ($37,900), which are all at around 1.2.
Greg Taylor, an economist at the Oxford Internet Institute in the UK, says "These results have a certain intuitive appeal. I guess in the developed world, you have a lot more to search for in the future in terms of the cultural experiences available - such as upcoming movie releases."
It wound be interesting to see if there is also an association of economic success with uses of prediction web services like Recorded Future.
New Scientist
New Scientist
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