Ig Nobel Prize for FEB’s Debra Trampe: ‘People who badly need to pee are less impulsive when making decisions’

The amusing Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded at Harvard University on Thursday evening, and research co-authored by Dr Debra Trampe of FEB was the winner in the category Medicine. The winning scientific article is about the effect of badly needing to pee on thought processes.

The international Ig Nobel Prizes, awarded every year a week before the real Nobel Prizes, are intended for research that ‘first makes people laugh, then makes them think’. The Medicine prize 2011 went to research about peeing by Miriam Tuk (Imperial COllege London), Debra Trampe of the Department of Marketing of FEB, and Luk Warlop (Catholic University of Leuven). The ceremony was held on Thursday evening at Harvard University. Trampe could not attend as she is on maternity leave.

 

Bladder control

The article by Tuk, Trampe and Warlop was published in 2011. The researchers discovered that people who have to control their bladders are less impulsive when making decisions. Among the choices the researchers had students make were between a small reward in the short term or a much larger one in the longer term. Students who badly needed to pee chose the long-term reward. Apparently people with good bladder control can also control themselves better in other fields and react more rationally.

► video of ceremony
► report by 'Wetenschap24' (in Dutch)