a few weeks ago i lost my wallet which
made me sad because it is a pain to get
everything replaced
then i thought what kind of person
doesn't return a wallet and then i
thought i'm a firm believer in the
scientific method i should test some
hypotheses
so i got 200 identical wallets in order
to drop them in each of the 20 cities
you see here the goal being not only to
see which cities were the most
and least honest but to ask questions of
anyone who called in to see if i could
pick out some patterns among the honest
ones and i wanted to make the wallets
look as real as possible so in each of
them i put a fake id
with no picture so as not to buy its
people six american dollars and 200
filipino dollars this is a way to make
it look like a lot of money when in
reality this is only worth four bucks
then i put in an ultrasound picture and
on the back
we hand wrote a date from four years ago
and then this adorable picture of a
puppy i found on reddit the goal was in
addition to the id and the money i
wanted to make it look like the wallet
had sentimental value to the owner i was
trying to remove
any excuse for someone not to return the
wallet such as it looked fake or it
wouldn't be worth a hassle if there was
only two bucks inside of a blank wallet
so in our case if they didn't return it
it would only be because they weren't
being honest then we had a fake loyalty
card and a random business card and then
critically a card that looked like it
came with a wallet that said if found
please call and then we wrote the phone
number and then because it's impractical
for me to actually visit 20 cities i
went on the instagram page for my
youtube channel to ask for help and
right away
the response was awesome once i had
selected my 20 helpers i sent them
instructions and shipped them each
10 wallets and then last monday all
across north america
operation wallet drop commenced
i asked them after they dropped the
wallets to try and get some secret
footage if possible and to do that
they came up with some pretty clever
methods
i'm actually going to tuck the wallet
underneath my car so when i drive away
it stays in the parking lot
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almost immediately calls started pouring
in from all of the cities so when people
would call in we asked them eight
questions such as if they were religious
or not or if there was still money in
the wallet when they found it and if so
of course we told them just to keep it
so after three days of collecting data
here's what we found
for starters and this blew my mind
two-thirds of the wallets
were returned and of those that were
returned 96
still had the money inside the average
age of one of the callers was 36 which
is almost
exactly the average age of a person in
the u.s so how old you are
doesn't seem to affect honesty there's a
pretty big disparity in which cities
were the most
and least honest and i'll get to the
rankings in just a minute but first i
wanted to test a hypothesis
that a person without a lot of money and
considered poor would be less
likely to return the wallet than someone
who had a lot of money and to do this i
looked up publicly available census data
and found the zip codes with the highest
and lowest medium income then i
instructed my friends helping in each
city
to randomly drop half the wallets in the
high income area of the city and then
the other half in the low income area
niche wallet was marked with a unique
number on the back of this card so we
knew exactly which city and location if
somebody called it in when we tallied it
up
60 wallets were called in from the high
income areas and exactly 60 wallets were
also returned from the low income areas
which i thought was pretty cool so a
rich person is no more likely to return
a wallet than someone in the lowest
income bracket who could probably use
the money in fact we had one person
calling who was homeless two people call
in who are living in shelters
and a fourth person who is a panhandler
all four of them
had full wallets another question i
wanted to test was if women were more
honest than men it turns out a majority
of the wallets were returned by men but
if you think about it that doesn't
necessarily mean
they are more honest because maybe the
locations they were dropped there's
typically more men like in front of a
sports bar or a hardware store so to
control for this i had all my helping
friends in each city
drop two of the ten wallets in a men's
restroom and then two in a women's
bathroom
this way we could control the gender of
the wallet finder once again
this came up nearly identical with 23
waltz returned for men versus
24 for women so gender doesn't seem to
play a role in a person's honesty either
and i should mention here one of the
questions we asked the callers was if
they thought the wallet looked fake or
suspicious at all and only a very small
minority did so this confirms that for
those who didn't call it was likely
because they were dishonest and not
because they thought
it wasn't a real person's wallet another
thing we tested was small town versus
big city so you notice four of the
cities
you've probably never heard of before
that's because they have populations of
around
a thousand people whereas the rest were
the largest cities in north america and
here we did see a significant difference
in the small town the average rate of
return was eight wallets
whereas in the big cities it was six and
i think this sort of makes sense to me
because small towns tend to foster a
sense of community
where everyone knows everyone versus the
anonymity of a big city and now for a
rundown of all the cities i'll break
them into three categories starting with
the least
honest we've got detroit with three
waltz returned and new york city with
four
i was really rooting for detroit and
hoping they would just surprise everyone
but looks like maybe they're still in
the process of their rebuilding efforts
then for the middle of the pack at five
wallets return we've got seattle los
angeles miami dallas and edmonton then
at six wallace return we've got
huntsville alabama and
new london connecticut which is one of
our small towns next at seven wallets
we've got san francisco winnipeg and
washington dc
the final category is the honest abe
cities with parma idaho
and las vegas at eight wallets and i
should mention for vegas instead of high
income and low income
we put half on the strip and then half
in the suburbs and for what it's worth
all five dropped on the strip were
returned and then at a remarkable nine
wallets return
we've got two more small cities with
nashua idaho and hill city south dakota
and then portland
oregon making fred and kerry proud and
finally there were two cities with an
astounding
100 return rate both for big cities with
chicago which i didn't see coming
and then salt lake city and before you
just chalk salt lake city up to those
gosh darn super nice mormons in salt
lake of the eight people we were able to
interview only three said they were
religious and only one
attended church in fact about 40 of the
people who turned in wallets said they
were not religious
and this is close enough to the average
for a large city that it's fair to say
that whether or not a person was
religious
seem to have no outcome on their honesty
according to our data and i should also
mention that while our two canadian
cities finished right in the middle of
the pack
my canadian friend saw this on his
facebook page right after dropping his
wallets and going the extra mile with a
blanket facebook post to find a random
wallet owner
is just about the most canadian thing
ever we also dropped 10 wallets in
disneyland and we were hoping to get a
large number back but we only got four
calls from individuals and then
two from security who were super
confused when they had identical wallets
turned in
at which point they made it very clear
they would not be calling us back if
more wallets came in
because they hate science so we had to
throw disneyland out as a data point
because we just don't know how many got
turned into security so those were the
findings and i'd say from all this
i learned two things the first is that
it's a really good idea to put your
phone number somewhere in your wallet
that's probably one of the reasons we
had such a high rate of return
also i found out if you find a wallet
you can drop it in any us post office
box and then we'll return it to the
address found on the driver's license
free of charge i tested this out and it
totally works and the second thing is
that in general people are way more
honest than i originally thought having
just lost my wallet i was anticipating a
return rate of maybe 20
so to get two out of every three wallets
back blew my mind
in one city a convenience order loved
what we were doing so she kept putting
the wallet back in the bathroom to see
if someone would steal it and after six
times
of somebody bringing the wallet back
with all of the money inside she gave up
trying
lately it seems like so much of what you
see online is meant to stoke
outrage at some group of people versus
ourselves because that's what gets
shared and that begins to warp our
perspectives that the only good people
out there are those within our own group
but this cold hard data shows that
across any age or gender
or socioeconomic background across the
whole religious spectrum
through middle america and along the
coast there are lots of good people
everywhere and not only that but they
constitute a majority
these people didn't call up for some
reward or facebook likes or because they
knew someone was watching they did it
because it was simply the right thing to
do
and i think that's pretty cool and
something worth remembering
thanks for watching
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you