Lost Wallet Test

If someone handed you a lost wallet, what would you do with it?

Would you try to find its owner, or would you keep it?

Some researchers recently studied this question.

They conducted a "lost wallet" experiment.

Thousands of people in 40 different countries took part in it.

The researchers acted like tourists who found a lost wallet.

Then, they gave the wallet to people working in public places, such as hotels and banks.

These wallets contained different amounts of money.

Some wallets had no money or just 13 dollars.

Others held about 100 dollars.

The researchers then waited to see which wallets were reported.

They believed that more people would keep the wallets with a lot of money.

But surprisingly, the very opposite thing occurred.

Fewer people returned wallets with little or no money.

Meanwhile, more people returned the wallets with the most money.

The researchers think that there were two reasons for this.

First, people might have felt worse for the imagined owner of the lost wallet.

Second, they might have felt guiltier about keeping the wallets with so much money.