Honesty is the best policy? Research reveals when people are most likely to return a lost wallet
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">According to classic economic theory, if you find a wallet on the street and find money in the wallet, your self interest in keeping the cash is likely to override the more honest behaviour of returning the wallet.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">However, new research in 40 countries has found that people are more honest than they think, at least when it comes to returning money to strangers.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">A study of 17,000 “lost” wallets in 355 cities revealed that people are more likely to return a wallet if it had money in it than when it was empty.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The study also found that if there was more money in the wallet, the more likely people were to return the wallet.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The study was published in the journal </span><a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aau8712"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Science</span></a> <span style="font-weight: 400;">said that a team of people handed in wallets that they claimed to find on the street in front of major institutions, such as banks or post offices.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The wallets contained no money, or the equivalent of US$13.45 in local currency, a grocery list and three identical business cards in the local language which made it possible to return the wallet.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In 38 out of 40 countries, people were more likely to return the money if it has money in it.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">"This is something we didn't expect," said behavioural economist Alain Cohn of the University of Michigan to the </span><a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-06-21/people-are-more-likely-to-return-a-wallet-if-it-has-money-in-it/11227766"><span style="font-weight: 400;">ABC.</span></a></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr Cohn said that there were two factors to explain the findings.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">"One is altruism — where you care about the other person even though they are a stranger."</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The second finding is that people didn’t like to view themselves as dishonest.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">"They said the more money in the wallet, the more they would feel like a thief if they didn't return it," he said.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">"The larger the amount of money, the more worried you are about your self-image — the more difficult it is to convince yourself that you're still a good person."</span></p>
