(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.) *

Imagine you see a wallet on the sidewalk. You are the only person who sees it. Inside, there is some money and a business card with an email address. Now, you have to decide: do you keep it or return it?

Many people and experts thought most finders would keep the money. However, a large study in 40 countries showed this was not true.

To see if people are honest, researchers left 17,300 wallets in 355 cities around the world. Some wallets had no money, but others contained about $13 of that country’s money ….(See complete article below.)

(This posting includes a handout LINK AT THE END OF THIS POST which you are welcome to use with your students.) *

For background information about these articles and for suggestions for how to use them with your students, see  • Introducing “Short, High-Interest Readings”  Also, I’ll be adding more of these articles in the right-hand column: ESL Reading> Short, High Interest Articles for Extensive Readings

Here is the 18th article. You can download the article for your students by clicking on the link at the end. Also included are three optional exercises: True-False Questions; Paraphrasing Exercise; Reflection Exercise.

                            Would You Return a Lost Wallet?

Imagine you see a wallet on the sidewalk. You are the only person who sees it. Inside, there is some money and a business card with an email address. Now, you have to decide: do you keep it or return it?

Many people and experts thought most finders would keep the money. However, a large study in 40 countries showed this was not true.

To see if people are honest, researchers left 17,300 wallets in 355 cities around the world. Some wallets had no money, but others contained about $13 of that country’s money.

For the study, a research assistant walked into businesses, for example, banks, hotels, post offices, and museums. They went to one of the staff members and said, “Hi, I found this on the street outside your building.” Then they gave the wallet to the staff member and said, “Somebody must have lost it. I’m in a hurry and have to go. Can you please try to find the owner?”

How many staff members were honest?

If there was no money in the wallet, 40% of the staff returned it to the owner by email. However, interestingly, 51% of the wallets with money in them were returned.

The researchers were so surprised by these findings that they repeated the experiment in three countries with even more money. This time, they compared wallets with $94, $13, and no money at all.  Here are the results:

• $94 in the wallet: 72% were returned.
• $13 in the wallet: 61% were returned.
• No money: 46% were returned.

In other words, the more money the wallets had in them, the more likely people would return them.

Why did so many people return the money?

According to Professor Alain Cohn, people want to be kind and don’t want to think of themselves as bad people. He said that if you find a lot of money, you might want to keep it, but you will also feel much worse about stealing it. It is hard to feel like a good person if you keep a lot of money. However, if you find a wallet with no money and don’t return it, you probably won’t feel like you are stealing.

Also, in another part of the study, some wallets contained a key. A key has no value to the finder, but it is very important to the owner. Wallets with a key were more likely to be returned. This suggests that people are more honest when they can imagine how the other person feels.

Here is the link to the article and exercises that you can use with your students: Lost wallet ARTICLE + EXERCISES

David Kehe
Faculty Emeritus

*About the free-download materials. During my 40 years of teaching ESL, I have had many colleagues who were very generous with their time, advice and materials. These downloads are my way of paying it forward.