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Study: How to give up your cake and eat it too
A new study shows how reciprocal generosity can benefit you.

- Researchers studied what people do when distributing items of unequal value.
- You may be more likely to get the item you want if you let the other person decide.
- Reciprocal generosity can let you "give up your cake and eat it too".
People may be nicer than you think. A new study says that people are generally willing to give up something they want to appear generous.
Let's say you've been circling the mall's parking lot and ended up next to a free space right by the elevator at the same time as another car with someone you know from the PTA. And you both have just as much of a claim to the spot. In the meantime, there's a spot much farther away that opened up as well. What would you do? Chances are, says the new paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, if you offer the person in the other car to choose what they'd like to do, they will give up the better spot to you and think you're generous.
Scientists Michael Kardas, Alex Shaw and Eugene Caruso at the University of Chicago conducted eight studies that showed the complexity of either/or scenarios, when a person has to choose between being worse off materially or having their reputation improve.
By utilizing a group of 300 online volunteers, the researchers looked at how frequently people abdicate decisions when faced with having to distribute items of unequal value – like a higher-end food product vs. something worse in quality – between themselves and a friend.
Almost 70% said they would abdicate the decision, giving the other person the choice in distributing the items. They would do so to seem more generous. In a real-life test of this study, an experiment conducted in a park that involved pairs of local people who knew each other, a similar ratio of 2/3s of the subjects decided to abdicate their decision. Interestingly, if they did that, more often then not, the other person gave up the more valuable item.
An additional online study of 310 people concluded that if people were informed that their friend abdicated the decision, leaving it up to them, they were much more likely to give up the higher-value object in question than to take it themselves.
Researchers see this fact supporting the idea that people view abdication of decision as an act of generosity, which would prompt a reciprocal generosity.
This abdication effect was observed among strangers as well but with a twist. If given the choice to decide what they or a stranger would get, participants were more likely to keep the higher-valued item for themselves. But if told that the stranger abdicated the decision to them, they were again more likely to give up the better option rather than keep it. A real-world test of this involved gift cards of varying amounts and showed the same results as the imaginary situations.
"In sum, abdication seems to be beneficial in more ways than one: abdicators are not only perceived to be generous, but they also tend to receive the larger slice of the pie," wrote the researchers.
They also described their finding as "abdication provides a unique opportunity for people to give up their cake and eat it too." It pays to be nice.
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Listen: Scientists re-create voice of 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummy
Scientists used CT scanning and 3D-printing technology to re-create the voice of Nesyamun, an ancient Egyptian priest.
- Scientists printed a 3D replica of the vocal tract of Nesyamun, an Egyptian priest whose mummified corpse has been on display in the UK for two centuries.
- With the help of an electronic device, the reproduced voice is able to "speak" a vowel noise.
- The team behind the "Voices of the Past" project suggest reproducing ancient voices could make museum experiences more dynamic.
Howard et al.
<p style="margin-left: 20px;">"While this approach has wide implications for heritage management/museum display, its relevance conforms exactly to the ancient Egyptians' fundamental belief that 'to speak the name of the dead is to make them live again'," they wrote in a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-56316-y#Fig3" target="_blank">paper</a> published in Nature Scientific Reports. "Given Nesyamun's stated desire to have his voice heard in the afterlife in order to live forever, the fulfilment of his beliefs through the synthesis of his vocal function allows us to make direct contact with ancient Egypt by listening to a sound from a vocal tract that has not been heard for over 3000 years, preserved through mummification and now restored through this new technique."</p>Connecting modern people with history
<p>It's not the first time scientists have "re-created" an ancient human's voice. In 2016, for example, Italian researchers used software to <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hear-recreated-voice-otzi-iceman-180960570/" target="_blank">reconstruct the voice of Ötzi,</a> an iceman who was discovered in 1991 and is thought to have died more than 5,000 years ago. But the "Voices of the Past" project is different, the researchers note, because Nesyamun's mummified corpse is especially well preserved.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"It was particularly suited, given its age and preservation [of its soft tissues], which is unusual," Howard told <em><a href="https://www.livescience.com/amp/ancient-egypt-mummy-voice-reconstructed.html" target="_blank">Live Science</a>.</em></p><p>As to whether Nesyamun's reconstructed voice will ever be able to speak complete sentences, Howard told <em><a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Weird/wireStory/ancient-voice-scientists-recreate-sound-egyptian-mummy-68482015" target="_blank">The Associated Press</a>, </em>that it's "something that is being worked on, so it will be possible one day."</p><p>John Schofield, an archaeologist at the University of York, said that reproducing voices from history can make museum experiences "more multidimensional."</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"There is nothing more personal than someone's voice," he told <em>The Associated Press.</em> "So we think that hearing a voice from so long ago will be an unforgettable experience, making heritage places like Karnak, Nesyamun's temple, come alive."</p>Virus made inequality much worse across the world, says report
Inequality in wealth, gender, and race grew to unprecedented levels across the world, according to OxFam report.
A businessman walks by a woman asking for money in New York City.
- A new report by global poverty nonprofit OxFam finds inequality has increased in every country in the world.
- The alarming trend is made worse by the coronavirus pandemic, which strained most systems and governments.
- The gap in wealth, race and gender treatment will increase until governments step in with changes.
People wait in line to receive food at a food bank on April 28, 2020 in Brooklyn.
Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Credit: Oxfam International
Scientists find 'smoking gun' proof of a recent supernova near Earth
A supernova exploded near Earth about 2.5 million years ago, possibly causing an extinction event.
An artist's impression of a supernova.
- Researchers from the University of Munich find evidence of a supernova near Earth.
- A star exploded close to our planet about 2.5 million years ago.
- The scientists deduced this by finding unusual concentrations of isotopes, created by a supernova.
This Manganese crust started to form about 20 million years ago. Growing layer by layer, it resulted in minerals precipitated out of seawater. The presence of elevated concentrations of 60 Fe and 56 Mn in layers from 2.5 million years ago hints at a nearby supernova explosion around that time.
Credit: Dominik Koll/ TUM
I spoke to 99 big thinkers about what our ‘world after coronavirus’ might look like – this is what I learned
There is no going "back to normal."
