Porn Use Climbs After Election Wins

A fun theory called the Challenge Hypothesis states that testosterone levels get a jolt after a person wins at something—and it's held true when applied to everything from aggressive lizards to British soccer fans. Now two psychology professors have tested it on politics and porn, and their forthcoming study finds that those who back the winner look at more online porn than those who were rooting for the loser. "The results were very consistent," Patrick Markey tells Aol News.

Markey and wife Charlotte looked at the relative popularity of 10 porn- and boob-esque keywords according to Google Trends in the weeks after the 2004, 2006, and 2008 elections. In 2004, such searches were up 2% in red states; in 2006 and 2008, they were up 3% in blue states. "That 2 to 3 percent may not seem like a lot," Markey says. But when you consider that Google has 2 billion searches from US IP addresses per week, a 3% swing is 60 million more searches for porn. And while Markey acknowledges that correlation doesn't equal causation, he says he's found a "remarkably consistent" correlation—that he'll test again, post-November. Click here for more.
(More pornography stories.)