Wallet Test = Honesty Test -> How Will People Behave?

[KenR]

Here's an interesting situation. Will people keep or return the valuables when a wallet is dropped in front of them?

...Each of the 100 wallets contained $2.10 in real money, a fake $50.00 gift certificate, some miscellaneous items and a clearly written ID card identifying the lost wallet's rightful owner. We were curious as to how honest people would be and wanted to see how different groups would compare to each other. For example, who would return the wallets more often... men or women? Young or old?

http://www.wallettest.com/

from alex3f

[Perry Mowbray]

  Doesn't pay to be a young black male... the stereotype just clubbed you in the head!!

Interesting all the same: I've had my wallet returned (sometimes in part) on a few occaisions.

- Perry

[mouser]

With only 100 wallets and such an informal study i'd be reallly careful about interpretting those stats as saying anything meaningfull, ESPECIALLY about race.  There are so many other factors youd want to look at like accounting for income, relation of gender and race between the person finding the wallet and the id of the person in the wallet, etc.  There are probably a million ways to get very different results.  For example, i wonder how much the results would have changed if the photo id of the person in the wallet was a pretty woman.. Do all the numbers suddenly flip?  What if the photo id was of a young kid or an elderly black woman?  But it is quite fascinating.

[Perry Mowbray]

With only 100 wallets and such an informal study i'd be reallly careful about interpretting those stats as saying anything meaningfull, ESPECIALLY about race.  There are so many other factors youd want to look at like accounting for income, relation of gender and race between the person finding the wallet and the id of the person in the wallet, etc.  There are probably a million ways to get very different results.  For example, i wonder how much the results would have changed if the photo id of the person in the wallet was a pretty woman.. Do all the numbers suddenly flip?  What if the photo id was of a young kid or an elderly black woman?  But it is quite fascinating.

-mouser (January 11, 2007, 08:17 PM)

They are certainly good points... in fact, it'd be good to see those aspects (pretty photos etc) plugged into the experiment to see what the results were; but then if the results did flip then it would just indicate situational morals.

This thread in their forum addresses a lot of the various issues raised: it must have generated a lot of heat!

I saw a game advert the other day that said something like "Games don't kill, people do" presumably concerning a violent game. These type of results wont change what people believe, it just may become part of the ammunition.

- Perry

[nudone]

i once found a wallet and took it to the local police station. there wasn't any money in it so it wasn't much of a test on my character.

[jgpaiva]

I'm so honest, that once i saw money on the floor and gave it to the guy who was walking in my front because i thought it dropped from his pocket! He looked at me, very surprised and only then did i realize that it actually wasn't his. I gave it to him anyways... (yep, i'm even enbaraced for being so dumb)

[f0dder]

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