Civic honesty around the globe

Abstract

Honesty and selfishness across cultures Rationalist approaches to economics assume that people value their own interests over the interests of strangers. Cohn et al. wanted to examine the trade-off between material self-interest and more altruistic behaviors (see the Perspective by Shalvi). They distributed more than 17,000 wallets containing various sums of money in 355 cities across 40 countries. In contrast to what rationalist theories of economics predict, citizens were more likely to return wallets that contained more money. The findings also reveal a high level of civic honesty across nations. Science , this issue p. 70 ; see also p. 29