Another repost from an earlier forum saved to my hard drive. Unfortunately, I did not save the discussion that came out of it. The post is based on an article in Reader's Digest, Canadian Edition, Aug. 2007 Excuse Me, Is This Your Phone? pp50-55.

In the blurb above the story, Reader's Digest says:

We dropped 30 phones in 32 cities around the world. How many would be returned?

The article is about the outcome.

Here's my repost:

When I lost my wallet last winter (left it in a school washroom and didn't miss it for about 90 minutes) I sort of knew I would find it in Security. I was really worried, naturally, but the people I talked to for advice sounded really confident that checking Security would bring positive results. It did. Nothing was taken.

Is it just this part of the country where people are honest or is this the general Canadian public? I've really wondered about this. Reader's Digest did an experiment in large cities around the world to see how many cell phones would be returned. They dropped 30 phones in 32 different cities (960 phones total) and 654 were returned--68%. Toronto was the second highest; 28 out of 30 phones were returned. I'm not that far from Toronto so I guess it's not just my imagination that most people are honest.

New York was a tie with two other cities. All ranked fifth: 24 were returned. London, England ranked 21st, on a par with Sydney, Australia. 19 were returned in both cities.

Ljubljana, Slovenia ranked top. 29 out of 30 were returned.

Did money make a difference? They noticed well-dressed people keeping phones and homeless people returning them. Among the highest level of "keeping it" were security guards in uniform. They would lie to the reporter even while they held the phone in their hand wrapped in paper.

The next five posts are from the discussion on the New Forums.

The following posts are part of an on-going conversation at Ex-Christian.net. To see the complete conversation, click here.

Very interesting observations from various parts of the world. Thanks.

No, Tokyo was not included. Sounds like Tokyo and Toronto are much the same, though I suspect Tokyo ranks even higher, based on what people say in this thread. I never heard of cash being returned. I'm not sure what I would do if I found a twenty dollar bill in the parking lot. It has never happened. I've found and kept a two-dollar coin. Felt real guilty for a bit because surely the person could use it. But there was no way to find the owner. I guess a find of cash could be turned in to security like they do in Tokyo. Never thought of that.

The two lowest returns were from Hong Kong, China and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. They tied at 31st rank. 13 out of 30 phones were returned in each city.

As someone pointed out, from a social scientific perspective this is not a water-proof experiment. They state in the article that this is not a scientific experiment. Probably I should have mentioned that in the opening post; wasn't sure how much technical detail to give. Here's the reference on the article:

Reader's Digest, Canadian Edition, August, 2007, pp 50-55.
Title: "Excuse Me, Is This Your Phone?" by The Editors.
Blurb: We dropped 30 phones in 32 cities around the world. How many would be returned?

I'm asking myself what can be observed about morals and religion in all of this. I understand Japan is a totally secular country, yet the return of lost items is far higher than in New York, the fundy capital of the world. China is secular, too, isn't it? So China and Japan probably cancel each other out. And we're back to what I've been observing for some time: Religion or lack thereof does not make a person better or worse.

Maybe I'm wrong about the religious factor in these cities. If so, I'd like to know.

Those two items probably feed off each other. People with lots enough can afford to respect the property of others and when people respect the property of others there is incentive to acquire enough for oneself.

As I look at what I have just written, I think that statement sounds like arm-chair philosophy and is way too simplisitic.

Originally posted by Ex-COG on the New Forums:

It may have to do with how each culture views the reason behind the action of a person leaving an item somewhere. When I was in Junior High, I had a social studies teacher that gave an example of this. He said that in Japan if you left, for example, a briefcase in a room or even a train station, the chances would be near 100% it would still be there in that spot the next day. He said that was because the Japanese assumed you would come back for it. In India, however, if you left a briefcase, it would be gone soon after you left. The Indians assumed that if you left something, that meant that you didn't want it anymore, so it was up for grabs. I don't know how true this theory is, but it's a thought. It may also be correct that it has something to do with the attitudes to personal property. Different cultures have different ideas about the whole concept of property.

Originally posted by a skeptical believer on the New Forums:



This actually happened to my youngest child at a Washington, DC airport. He accidentally left his cell phone beside a game station at a fast food kiosk in the airport. After realizing he didn't have it, searching the area he was in & going through the garbage where he deposited his trash, his brother decided to call the lost cell phone. To our surprise the people who picked it up said they would return the phone for a fee of $200.00. Long story short - we ended up getting security involved, creating a "sting operation" and barely making our flight. The people who had taken the phone were definitely not homeless. A valuable lesson was able to be taught to my children about integrity & honesty.