This Lost Wallet Experiment Restored Our Faith In Humanity [VIDEO]

A guy who lost his wallet decided to do an experiment to determine the average person’s honesty, which had really surprising results.

By DAVID on May 17, 2018
(Photo by Phil Cole/Getty Images)

A guy lost his wallet which was never returned to him, so he decided to do an experiment. He got ahold of 200 wallets, and filled them all with identical amounts of money, cards, and I.D. He then scattered them all around the country (20 different cities), and waited for either a call, or for the wallet to show up somewhere. His results were actually quite impressive, with a majority of the wallets coming back with everything inside.

It’s a really great experiment, and seems to point to the fact that people really are honest. Only 4% of the wallets returned had no money inside. Overall, about 2/3rds of the total number of wallets were actually returned. The cities included were Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, Miami, Portland, Los Angeles, New York, etc. The guy setting everything up actually made sure that the wallets were scattered evenly. Meaning, half in higher income parts of the city, and half in lower. This would give a good look at honesty between “social classes.” This would determine whether or not someone’s income has an affect on honesty. Here’s the video he made once the experiment was complete.

So, surprisingly, the results aren’t exactly what we expected. It shows an even split between income, sex, basically showing that the average person is honest enough no matter what the situation. It’s a really cool experiment, and the guy went into great detail about how he planned things, and how he handled various variables. Really cool!

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