OF SANTA CLAUS, CHILDREN NAUGHTINESS, AND VIRUS: A CHRISTMAS TALE

Keywords: Christmas, Xmas, Santa, Santa Claus, Christmas Eve, Xmas Eve, children, kids, virus, pandemic, SARS-CoV-2, flu, measles, naughtiness, naughty list, myth, popular belief, North Pole, deprivation, hospitals, United Kingdom, UK

- Testo in italiano alla fine del post -

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Ooooh, hello dear English speaking-reading-hearing visitor, welcome back to me, @sciencemug, the blog/podcast/twitter&instagram accounts/entity behind the unsuccessful e-shop stuffngo (sNg) on zazzle.com which tells you science stories while exploring all the 11 dimensions of spacetime while putting its virtual ear on them vibrating membranes hoping like that to catch the voice of a trans-dimensional entity of mighty wisdom talking about how to correctly answer your significant other’s question: ”does this dress make me look fat?”, aaand which talks to you thanks to the voice, kidnapped via a voodoo-wireless trick, from a veeery very very dumb human.

Aaand which does all of this in English-question-mark, a language that is to proper English what 2020 is to an even slightly not crappy year for human kind.

Today I’m gonna tell you a story that debunks (or not, who knows, dear wait-and-find-out reader) the notion according to which Santa Claus only visits children who well behaved during the year (and no, Santa, it’s not the outfit, you ARE fat!).

 

Santa Claus & the naughtiness issue (by @sciencemug)

[Badass Santa pic, by hue12 photography, is a free pic (source: Unsplash); adapted by @sciencemug]

 

Six scholars from Harvard and other universities and medical institutions of the USA and United Kingdom (UK), in 2016 publish a paper (P) on the science journal The BMJ (formerly know as the British Medical Journal), which, founded in 1840, “is one of the world's oldest general medical journals” (see) out there.

The six academics, led by at the time prestigious Kennedy scholarship owner John J Park (we’ll call the JJ6 from now on), decide to investigate whether it be true or not the commonly accepted opinion that Santa Claus (“also known as Saint Nicholas, St Nick, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle, Santy, or simply Santa” (P)) decide which kids to visit depending on their past year round good or bad behavior.

Now, the JJ6, to test this popular belief, select

OF WHY PEOPLE ARE LESS GENEROUS ON XMAS THAN THE REST OF THE YEAR! (Pt2 of 2)

Keywords: Christmas, Xmas, Black Friday, charity, economics, experimental economics

Ooooh, hello dear English speaking-reading-hearing listener, welcome back to me, @sciencemug, the blog/podcast/twitter&instagram accounts/entity behind the unsuccessful e-shop stuffngo on zazzle.com which can hold its breath for 55 straight hours since it has neither lungs nor cardiovascular system (let alone a brain in need of oxygen), aaand which talks to you thanks to the voice, kidnapped via a voodoo-wireless trick, from a veeery very very dumb human.

Aaand which does all of this in Eng?ish, a language that is to proper English what to publish the second part of a Xmas episode closer to Valentine’s day than to Christmas itself is to something belonging to the realm of the things that make even a pale imitation of sense...

Soo dear listener, in the previous episode I told you the first of two studies (study 1 and study 2) about seasonal effects on people’s propensity to donate to charity and ‘bout its surprising findings: on Christmas time donations are less than on summer time, and this is a trend unexpectedly driven by prosocial individuals (i.e. people with a predisposition to generosity), who donate less frequently and less money during winter Holidays.

The studies are performed by two researchers of the German University of Gottingen, Dr. Stephan Muller and Professor of Experimental Economics Holger A. Rau (aka the Rau's Duo, or the RDs) and are published on a paper (P) on the open access scientific journal PLOSONE.

In this episode, dear listener, I’ll tell you what the RDs do to understand why is that people, especially prosocials, are less generous on Xmas time than on summer, in other words, what are the “[d]rivers of the lower donations“ (P).

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So, the Rau’s Duo performs its second study (study 2) the week after the Black Friday, that is in November. The researchers recruit again subjects from the Gottingen University, but none of those already involved in the previous study (study 1) or in other similar studies.

The RDs pick 72 persons (42 females and 30 males) between 18 and 50 years old with an average age of 22 and a half.

The first part of study 2 is identical to study 1 (do you remember dear reader? Semi fake money called Talers that can be donated to the German Red Cross, Social Value Orientation (SVO) evaluation of prosocials, individualistics, competitives, and so on and on (if you don’t remember, dear listener, well, don’t worry, just check the previous post/episode and maybe consider implementing your diet with some phosphorus, but hurry up mate, since world’s irreplaceable reserves of this essential stuff are depleting at an alarming rate (see)).

Anyway, dear listener, of the 72 individuals initially selected for study 2, only 66 are eventually tested (of which fifty are prosocials, and sixteen individualistics). The competitives and the “none of the above” are indeed, as happened in study 1, discharged.

So, dear listener, surprise surprise, the results of this first part of study 2 are basically the same of study 1: meaning those sneaky prosocials are the ones responsible for sinking the donations rate on Xmas season, while individualistics are steady cheap lads both in summer and winter holiday time.

At this point the second phase of study 2 starts. Unlike in study 1,

OF WHY PEOPLE ARE LESS GENEROUS ON XMAS THAN THE REST OF THE YEAR! (Pt1 of 2)

Keywords: charity, Christmas, economics, experimental economics, Xmas

Hooooo-ho-hooooo, hello dear English speaking-reading-hearing listener, welcome back to me, @sciencemug, the blog/podcast/twitter&instagram accounts/entity behind the unsuccessful e-shop stuffngo on zazzle.com which tells you Christmas science stories while daring Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, to hide Santa’s GPS one minute before the midnight on Xmas eve just to see what happens, aaand which talks to you thanks to the voice, kidnapped via a voodoo-wireless trick, from a veeery very very dumb human.

Aaand which does all of this in Eng?ish, a language that is to proper English what a Christmas with your family is to an experience absolutely totally 1000% stress free.

Today I'm gonna tell you a tale about charity, experimental economics and Christmas! (Ok, ok, not quite hard science, I agree, but still, there's the scientific method and some statistics...)  

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Two researchers of the German University of Gottingen, Dr. Stephan Muller and Professor of Experimental Economics Holger A. Rau (aka the Rau's Duo, or the RDs), investigate whether people propensity to donate money to charity vary according to the time of the year. The two scholars get to a surprising conclusion (you’ll understand why and how surprising, dear reader, along the way of my tale) and the research duo then publishes its findings in a paper (P) on the open access scientific journal PLOS ONE.

Sooo, dear reader, statistics say that, in the United States, more than one third (33.6%) of the annual donations are