Science News

The authors culled data from 45 countries with substantial Internet-using populations. Then they sorted those 45 countries by GDP ("also the most obvious variable," Moat says). A clear pattern popped out of the numbers: Countries with lower GDPs had lower future orientation scores, and vice versa. People in poorer countries did more searches concerning the previous year; those in wealthier nations searched more for the next year. The trend was strong, and it held up in data from 2009 and 2008 as well.

Internet users from countries with a higher per capita gross domestic product (GDP) are more likely to search for information about the future than information about the past, a quantitative analysis of Google search queries has shown.