The funny side of academic research: Mirjam Tuk Wins Ig Nobel Prize

Need to make a rational decision? Have another drink! Mirjam Tuk and her colleagues have demonstrated that people with a full bladder take more rational decisions. This finding brought a smile to the face of the lg Nobel Prize jury. Therefore, the research was awarded an Ig Nobel Medicine Prize at Harvard University.

The lg Nobels are awarded for research that initially makes people laugh, and then think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual; honour the imaginative; and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology. The lg Nobel prizes, an American parody of the Nobel Prizes, were awarded by genuine Nobel Prize winners. The ceremony took place at Harvard University in Boston on the 30th of September.

The award-winning working paper is entitled ‘Inhibitory spillover’. In it, Tuk and her fellow researchers argue that controlling your bladder can lead to more behavioural control. For example, your ability to resist immediate temptations in monetary decision-making increases. Unknowingly, this leads to more rational decisions. Read the full article ‘Inhibitory Spillover: Increased Urination Urgency Facilitates Impulse Control in Unrelated Domains’, by Mirjam Tuk, Debra Trampe and Luk Warlop, at SSRN.

Mirjam Tuk, currently employed at University of Twente, obtained her PhD degree from ERIM in 2008.Her dissertation is titled “Is Friendship Silent When Money Talks? How People Respond to Word-of-Mouth Marketing”.