Lost wallet? More cash means finders aren’t keepers
NEW YORK— People are more likely to return a lost wallet if it contains money — and the more cash, the better.
That’s the surprising conclusion from researchers who planted more than 17,000 “lost wallets” across 355 cities in 40 countries and kept track of how often somebody contacted the supposed owners.
The presence of money — the equivalent of about $13 in local currency — boosted this response rate to about 51 per cent, versus 40 per cent for wallets with no cash. That trend showed up in virtually every nation.
Researchers raised the stakes in the U.S., the United Kingdom and Poland. The response jumped to 72 per cent for wallets containing the equivalent of about $94, versus 61 per cent for those containing $13. If no money was enclosed, the rate was 46 per cent. How can this be? “The evidence suggests that people tend to care about the welfare of others, and they have an aversion to seeing themselves as a thief,” said Alain Cohn of the University of Michigan, one author who reported the results Thursday in the journal Science.
Another author, Christian Zuend of the University of Zurich, said “it suddenly feels like stealing” when there’s money in the wallet. “And it feels even more like stealing when the money in the wallet increases,” he added. That idea was supported by the results of polls the researchers did in the U.S., the U.K. and Poland, he told reporters.
The wallets in the study were actually transparent business card cases, chosen so that people could see any money inside without opening them. A team of 13 research assistants posed as people who had just found the cases and turned them in at banks, theatres, museums or other cultural establishments, post offices, hotels and police stations or other public offices. The key question was whether the employee receiving each case would contact its supposed owner, whose name and email address were displayed on three identical business cards within.
The business cards were crafted to make the supposed owner appear to be a local person, as was a grocery list that was also enclosed. Some cases also contained a key, and they were more likely to get a response than cases without a key. That led the researchers to conclude that concern for others was playing a role, since a key is valuable to its owner but not a stranger.
The effect of enclosed money appeared in 38 of the 40 countries, with Mexico and Peru the exceptions. Nations varied widely in how often the wallet’s “owner” was contacted.
In Switzerland the rate was 74 per cent for wallets without money and 79 per cent with it, while in China the rates were 7 per cent and 22 per cent. The U.S. figures were 39 per cent and 57 per cent.