Researchers who documented a less-than-saintly truth about human friendship won the 2026 Ig Nobel Peace Prize on Sept. 3, at the first ceremony held outside the United States.
Jaimie Arona Krems, Rebecka Hahnel-Peeters, Laureon Merrie, Keelah Williams and Daniel Sznycer were honoured for showing that people want friends who are kind and trustworthy — to them — but often prefer those same friends to be vicious toward people they dislike.
The award, given by the Annals of Improbable Research for work that “first makes people laugh, then think,” recognized a 2023 paper in Evolution and Human Behaviour. Across six studies of 1,183 people in the U.S. and India, participants generally favoured prosocial friends. That preference flipped when the target was an enemy: many wanted their friends to be more ruthless than kind.
The finding challenges the idea that people simply want universally nice companions. Friendships sit inside larger networks, the authors argue, so a friend’s behaviour toward rivals can be as valuable as how they treat you.
The ceremony, themed around fungi and staged in Zurich after organizers cited U.S. travel concerns, also honoured research on cockroach milk, splash-free urinals and 1,000 buried pairs of underwear.
The Peace Prize, at least, required no digging.