Members in the Media
From: ABC

Most, Least Honest Cities: Where Are People Most Likely to Return a Lost Wallet?

ABC’s Good Morning America:

Don’t drop your wallet in Lisbon: That’s one finding from an experiment designed by Reader’s Digest to test the honesty of people in 16 major cities worldwide. Of a dozen wallets dropped in Lisbon, only one was returned.

Go ahead, though, and lose your wallet in Helsinki: There 11 of out 12 lost wallets were returned.

 In the experiment, Digest reporters deliberately dropped a total of 192 wallets in 16 cities in Europe, Asia and North and South America. Each one contained a cell phone number, a family photo, business cards and $50 U.S. (or the local equivalent).

In “How Honest Are We?” a story in its October issue, the Digest reports that a total of 90 wallets (47 percent) were returned.

Fiery Cushman, an assistant professor of cognitive, linguistic and psychological science at Brown University’s Moral Psychology Research Laboratory, calls the Digest’s experiment “a fun idea.”

Read the whole story: ABC’s Good Morning America

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