There's a new study "Civic honesty around the globe" recently published in the journal, Science that has received a lot of attention this past week in both the press and social media (for example, see the headline story on NPR "What dropping 17,000 wallets around the globe can teach us about honesty"). It's really quite an interesting article, but the headlines are a little misleading. Let me explain.
Given all the attention on corporate ethics and corruption in business, a group of researchers from the Department of Economics at the University of Zurich conducted a series of large-scale field experiments on honesty. Several studies in the past have shown, in most cases rather convincingly, that largely as a function of rational self-interest (i.e., most individuals look after number one - themselves), honest behavior should become less common as the potential gains from acting dishonestly increase. In other words, if we have a chance to get more of something - whether that something is money or some other kind of advantage - most economic models suggest that there is a greater chance of cheating or other unethical behavior. Most of the research conducted in this area has involved either laboratory-based experiments or direct observation of actual practices (for example, companies acting dishonestly to achieve material advantage - think of the Enron scandal or WorldCom scandals to name just two). Therefore, in order to test this in the real world, with real people, these investigators conducted an incredibly large and well-designed study in 355 different cities in 40 different countries around the world.
Basically study investigators returned "lost wallets" to individuals (who were not part of the study) at banks, theaters, museums, post offices, hotels, or police stations. As they handed over the wallet they would tell these individuals, "Hi, I found this [pointing to the wallet as they handed it over] on the street around the corner. Somebody must have lost it. I'm in a hurry and have to go. Can you please take care of it?"
Each wallet was completely transparent (think of a business card case) and had three identical business cards (listing the name and contact number of the wallet's "owner"), a grocery list, and a key. Some of the wallets contained nothing else ("No Money" condition), some contained US $13.45 in local currency ("Money" condition), and in a small subset of cities (in the US, UK, and Poland), US $94.15 in local currency ("Big Money" condition).
The investigators dropped off more than 17,000 wallets. So, what happened? Surprisingly (and rather reassuringly), adding money to the wallet increased the likelihood that the individual would report the lost wallet to the owner (increasing from 40% likelihood in the "No Money" condition to 51% in the "Money" condition). Further, in the subset of cities in the US, UK, and Poland, the likelihood that the wallet was reported missing increased even more as the amount of money in the wallet increased (increasing from a 46% likelihood in the "No Money" condition to 61% in the "Money" condition and 72% in the "Big Money" condition). These rates were fairly consistent regardless of which country that was studied! Across the globe, when the wallets were reported missing, over 98% of the money was returned!
Some of the headlines about this study in the past week are somewhat misleading - most of the reports in the media suggest that the investigators dropped the wallet on the street. Regardless, the fact that in most cases, the individuals who received the lost wallet were more than likely to contact the owner to report it (and then return almost all of the money in the process) is rather reassuring. Additional data reported in the study suggested that in most cases, these individuals reported the missing wallet out of altruistic concerns or an aversion to viewing oneself as a thief, rather than fear of reprisal or legal action.
So, in addition to being the best policy, honesty appears to be more common than previously thought!
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