Ig Nobel prizes 2026: wealthy shown to steal children's sweets, kissing gets a scientific definition
This year's satirical Ig Nobel awards honoured research showing wealthier people behave worse, a new scientific definition of kissing, and a urinal designed to eliminate splashing. Genuine Nobel laureates presented the prizes at the ceremony.
The annual Ig Nobel prize ceremony took place on Thursday, honouring unusual research that first makes people laugh and then makes them think. Winners received prizes including a since-discontinued 10tn-dollar Zimbabwean banknote, with real Nobel laureates on stage to present the awards.
Wealth linked to worse behaviour
The economics prize went to a team of psychologists led by Dr Paul Piff of the University of California, Irvine. Through a series of experiments, the researchers found that wealthier people were more likely to cut off other drivers, ignore pedestrians, and lie at work. In one experiment, volunteers were left alone with a jar of sweets intended for children; upper-class participants took nearly twice as many sweets as those from lower-class backgrounds. Piff said that as wealth and power increase, people tend to become less attentive to the needs of others.
A definition for kissing, and a splash-free urinal
The biomechanics prize went to Dr Matilda Brindle and colleagues at Oxford University, who developed a precise scientific definition of kissing while studying its evolutionary origins. The physics prize was awarded to a student team led by Kavee Thurairajah at the University of Waterloo in Canada, who found that urinal splash is almost eliminated when a stream hits the surface at less than 30 degrees, and designed a urinal shape to minimise splashing regardless of aim.
Other winners
The peace prize recognised research from the University of California, Los Angeles on how friends' hostility towards our enemies can strengthen bonds. The biology prize went to Brazilian researchers who studied how venomous snakes react to being stepped on in different places, though the paper was later retracted due to a lack of ethical approval. Further prizes went to studies on the energy content of cockroach milk, why babies smell pleasant to parents while teenagers do not, turning mosquito mouthparts into 3D-printing nozzles, the aerodynamics of nose-blowing, and burying underwear to assess soil quality.
