Maybe kindness and altruism aren’t the only motivations involved
You probably saw the story about the lost wallets, which shone briefly and hopefully last month through the fog of our depressing moment in history. To recap, researchers left 17,000 wallets in 355 cities around the world, some containing large or small amounts of money – and contrary to expectations, people proved more likely to contact the owner when cash was involved. Better still, while 51% of people reported wallets containing about £10 (compared to 40% for empty wallets), the rate rose to 72% when the sum was £75. True, there were national differences in honesty – annoyingly, this is another area where the Scandinavians surpass the Brits – but the headline was clear: the death of human decency had been wildly exaggerated. What kind of grouchy misanthrope could possibly find something negative in that result? The answer, I regret to inform you, is: whatever kind of grouchy misanthrope I am.
To be clear, should you find a lost wallet, I think it’s best to return it. But a second, survey-based phase of the study suggests that kindness and altruism weren’t the only motivations involved; another major factor was “an aversion to viewing oneself as a thief”. People want to feel morally good about themselves – which explains the higher rate at which wallets with greater sums of money were reported, because you’re more of a thief if you keep £75 than £10. As one of the researchers put it, “Keeping a found wallet means having to adapt one’s self-image, which comes with psychological costs.” If you’re still wondering why there might be anything bad about people being deeply invested in thinking of themselves as moral, I can only respond: have you spent five minutes on Twitter recently?
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