Are we more altruistic than expected?

[Graeme]

The test.

"Civic honesty is essential to social capital and economic development, but is often in conflict with material self-interest. We examine the trade-off between honesty and self-interest using field experiments in 355 cities spanning 40 countries around the globe. We turned in over 17,000 lost wallets with varying amounts of money at public and private institutions, and measured whether recipients contacted the owner to return the wallets. In virtually all countries citizens were more likely to return wallets that contained more money. Both non-experts and professional economists were unable to predict this result. Additional data suggest our main findings can be explained by a combination of altruistic concerns and an aversion to viewing oneself as a thief, which increase with the material benefits of dishonesty."

REF: ScienceMag: https://science.sciencemag.org/conten...

"Regardless of country, people were more likely to try to return wallets with larger amounts of money inside, according to a new study published Thursday in Science. This butts against long-standing economic models that predict people are more likely to be dishonest when the potential payout is larger."

REF: Science Alert: https://www.sciencealert.com/scientis...

"People are more likely to return a lost wallet with money inside than an empty wallet, concluded a group of international researchers who set out to test the tension between financial self-interest and honesty of people around the world. To the surprise of researchers, people who found the wallets returned them more often when they had a small sum of money than if the wallets didn’t have any money at all—and returned the wallets even more often if they had nearly $100...."

REF (Subscription) Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/articles/people-a...

"Plenty of people around the world, it turns out, are willing to return a stranger’s lost wallet - especially if it’s filled with cash, according to a counterintuitive study."

REF: Gizmodo: https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2019/06/re...

Questions:

[1] So economists think we're a bunch of back-stabbing bastards out for a quick buck - and are completely surprised to discover that altruism is a dominant characteristic. What does this mean about our culture? About how our 'educated,' elites view the rest of us? About how we view ourselves?

[2] What are the implications of people being more altruistic and honest than expected?

[3] What is the role of trust in strangers in our culture/civilization?

[4] What are the negative implications of broad altruism/trust? Does it simply mean that people are more vulnerable to being conned, scammed, and ripped off?

Thoughts?

[J.]

A few thoughts:

1.) Don't lose your wallet in China.

2.) The sample size is good, but the experiment deselected individuals above lower middle-class income as counter staff and their immediate supervisors are unlikely to earn an upper middle-class salary or above. It is possible that the sociopathy anticipated by the economists increases the likelihood of an individual to occupy a deselected higher income bracket.

[Nik]

An interesting experiment, no doubt. I also believe the altruistic dimension (or egoistic in a sense that people want to perceive themselves as 'good fellas') is bigger than is thought.
Working alongside businessmen of different calibers, I was amazed to learn how many believe that 'switching off decency' was essential to business success and how they were "switching' it back on in downtime, family, friends and social environment. I understand where it comes from, but I still believe it's a wrong approach. Biz is not an another dimension.
Speaking of the experiment- a wallet without money is worthless, as the recommendation is always to cancel credit cards, once they appear lost. I would cancel them anyway just in case even if the wallet was returned to me. People know that and might consider a return of lost wallet as a waste of time.
Secondly, 13 dollars and even 90+ that they call the 'big money' is just not tempting enough to sell your soul -:) I would like to see what happens if they find 10K in it
Thirdly, it's not they that found it. They are asked by someone who supposedly did to try to return it to the owner. Some maybe don't want to fail the request of another person and it was not their 'find'. anyway Some others don't risk to take it, because another person was already involved. While yet some others - may suspect that the first person has already taken the money and fear to look for the owner not to be blamed for doing something they didn't.
Fourthly, it's representative to see most economically comfy countries (Scandinavian and all) at the top, and less economically successfully at the bottom.

[Scout]

Yes, having another person present you with the wallet skews the results. For a true result, a person has to find the wallet on his own and then decide what to do. This experiment doesn't prove much.