The last piece

posted on 08:26 AM on Thursday 07 March 2019

I opened up a box of chocolates recently to share amongst the office folks. This is what is left after a day or two.

There is a single piece left which is the most outstanding piece, the rest were mostly not wrapped in foil. Now this is a fairly common phenomenon where if food is shared, there is always a piece left over which no one wants to take.

Searched around and there was a paper on this:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002210311000226X

Effron, Daniel and Dale T. Miller. 2011. Diffusion of entitlement: An inhibitory effect of scarcity on consumption. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 47: 378-383.