An expert jury awarded the prizes on Wednesday afternoon. Kramer won five thousand euros and a piece of art and gets to design a course for the Honours College. He had been nominated by the Faculty of Economics and Business, where he mainly focuses on investment behaviours.
A total of ten lecturers had been nominated, each of them suggested by their own faculty. They each held an eight-minute lecture on a subject they were experts on.
Marshmallows
Kramer talked about the psychology of saving, comparing an experiment involving marshmallows with saving up for a pension fund.
This experiment showed that people would rather eat two marshmallow right away than eat one now and save one for later. This behaviour is similar to how people save up for their pensions.
Kramer talked about the concept of loss aversion, which constitutes that people often have little willpower and hate to lose things. The benefits of saving something for later don’t outweigh losing something now.
God
Adriaenssen had people thinking about proof of the existence of God based on the writing of medieval arch bishop Anselm. Iaonnou talked about her childhood on Cyprus and how this led to her research on ‘the other’ in children’s literature. Both lecturers won 2,500 euros.
Prior to the ten mini lectures, Julie Schell with the University of Texas gave a lecture about learning. She said that most people don’t know how to learn properly; rather than endlessly repeating the material, she explained it’s better to remember it.