Associate Professor of Psychology Keelah Williams’ collaborative research paper titled, Sometimes we want vicious friends: People have nuanced preferences for how they want their friends to behave toward them versus others, was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize at a ceremony in Zürich, Switzerland, on Sept. 3.
Just 10 winners are selected each year for the awards that “honor achievements so surprising that they make people laugh, then think.”
“My team won this year in the "Peace" prize category,” Williams said. “Previous research finds that people want friends who are kind, helpful, and nice. But as our new research showed, what people really want are friends who are kind, helpful, and nice TO THEM. If the target is an enemy, we actually prefer friends who are willing to be a bit vicious.”
Now in its 36th year, “The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology,” reads the website of Improbable Research, the international group of journalists, scientists, and artists responsible for the awards and an associated journal.
Williams collaborated with a team of researchers for the paper that was published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior in 2023. The research team included Jaimie Arona Krems (UCLA), Rebecka K. Hahnel-Peeters (Indiana State University) Laureon A. Merrie (MeasuringU), and Daniel Sznycer (Oklahoma State University).
Posted September 18, 2026
