Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
Nah. I'm on vacation. Otherwise, I'd give you links to any number of experiments that back me up.
Of course, those are experiments, carried out in controlled conditions.
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And the Reader's Digest wallet experiment was rather less scientific, I suppose, but carried out with real people in real conditions. They left wallets lying around and secretly watched to see what happened to them. A few years later, they did the same thing with cell phones.
In most cities ... nearly every wallet and phone was returned.
It's been replicated by various experimenters in various different ways, and it's always come out the same: most people are honest.
We tend to see ourselves in others. Honest people expect other people to be honest, and vise versa. So is fear of prosecution the only thing keeping
you from stealing? Or from downloading unauthorized copies of books, movies, music, whatever? If not, then why do you expect worse of other people?