The “Big Money” wallet lost in some countries, containing nearly $100 in cash.
Credit: Christian Lukas Zünd/ Science
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.
The study, published in the journal Science on Thursday, was a meticulous social experiment that took three years and over half a million dollars to complete.
A group of 13 research assistants (11 men and 2 women) were recruited for a trip around the world. They traveled to 355 major cities across 40 countries. In each city, they visited banks, theaters, hotels, police stations, and other public spaces and turned in a “lost wallet,” which they claimed to have found on the street, to a nearby employee.
The wallets were all see-through and contained a grocery list written in the country’s primary language, a key, and business cards with a male name and email address where the finder could presumably reach the owner. Some of the wallets also contained a […]
Most interesting and counterintuitive. That said, I actually did lose my wallet with considerably more money and credit cards. It was returned by a stranger with money intact.