Surprise: 17,000 lost wallets show humans are nice people (mostly)

Humans are a gregarious species. Most people do the right thing, and it’s this altruism, or self-identification as a “good person” that the climate industry preys on.

In a new study, researchers pretended to be tourists dropping 17,000 wallets they’d “found” into banks, offices, theatres and such, then tracking which ones got returned. To most people’s astonishment (lay person and expert) not only were a lot of wallets returned but the ones with the most money ($94) in them were returned more often.

What nobody seems to have remarked on is that these wallets were just plastic pouches. Which makes it all the more amazing that in so many nations a mere $13 in a plastic envelope might prompt half the population (or more) to send an email. How many people couldn’t be bothered, not because they are dishonest, but they figure, with petrol and parking, it’s not worth the owners time to come collect this? Indeed, people even sent off an email to return the “wallets” which didn’t have money to begin with.

Ed Cara at Gizmodo inadvertently summed up the zeitgeist of Western self hate, saying that this new study shows ” …maybe we’re not as awful a […]