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BUDDING politicians take note. If you want to get ahead, give some cash to a good cause and make sure everyone knows about it. The advice comes from a German biologist who watched the behaviour of students donating money to each other and to charity.

Manfred Milinski of the Max Planck Institute of Limnology in Plön wanted to discover the roots of what makes us philanthropic. To find out, he set up a game in which seven students each started with 35 Deutschmarks (about £10) and had to donate money to other students with the aim of ending up richest.…

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