Honesty pays.

It turns out that people around the world are honest, but not too honest. This article examines the intersection of self-interest and honesty by utilizing field experiments involving over 17K wallets, 350 cities, 40 countries, and a few civic-minded authors. “Lost” wallets with varying amounts of money were turned in at both private and public institutions to gauge whether recipients attempted to return the wallets by contacting the owners. Surprisingly, across most countries, people were more likely to return wallets that contained more money, highlighting a global aversion to thievery increasing proportionate to the financial benefit of the dishonesty. | Cohn, Science 2019