200 Dropped Wallets Test Most and LEAST Honest Cities in America

In this world, it can be pretty easy to get a little bit cynical from time to time. After all, when we look around, it seems as if mostly negative stories find their way to the top. It is human nature, at the end of the day, to be attracted to the train wreck, though.

This might leave us wondering, though, just how negative the world really is. Is everything all doom and gloom with everybody looking out for themselves or is there a glimmer of hope in the world as people are really better than we give them credit for?

This time, we check in with YouTube creator, Mark Rober, as he tests out this hypothesis to see just how honest and good people really are. If someone finds a wallet lying in the street with no incentive to give it back other than acting out of the goodness of their heart, just how likely are they to end up returning this wallet to its rightful owner?

In the experiment below, we find that 200 wallets were dropped in a wide variety of cities. Each wallet would be disguised to make it look as real as possible and include a little bit of money to give the finder an incentive to end up hanging onto the wallet. Just how many of these folks would do the right thing, though?

As it turns out, about 2/3 of the wallets were returned with about 96% of these having the money still inside. The interesting part, though, isn’t just how many people in general decided that it would be best to try and return the wallet. Instead, when the test is broken down by different factors like age and income, we can really see where most people stand when it comes to being honest when they think nobody’s watching.