CHICAGO, June 20 (Xinhua) -- An international team of behavioral scientists turned 17,303 "lost" wallets containing varying amounts of money into public and private institutions in 355 cities across 40 countries, with the goal of seeing just how honest the people who handled them would be when it came to returning the "missing" property to their owners.

In 38 of 40 countries, citizens overwhelmingly were more likely to report lost wallets with money than without, according to a new study.

The results were not quite what the researchers from the University of Michigan (UM), the University of Zurich and the University of Utah expected, the UM website on Thursday quoted the study published in the current issue of Science as saying.

Overall across the globe, 51 percent of those who were handed a wallet with the smaller amount of money reported it, compared with 40 percent of those that received no money.

However, When the wallet contained a large sum of money, the rate of return increased to 72 percent, said the study.

"The psychological forces, an aversion to not viewing oneself as a thief, can be stronger than the financial ones," said co-author Michel Andre Marechal of the University of Zurich.

"Honesty is important for economic development and more generally for how society functions in almost all relationships," said Alain Cohn, assistant professor at the UM School of Information. "Yet, it often is in conflict with individual self-interest."

The wallets either contained no money, a small amount of 13.45 dollars or a larger sum of 94.15 dollars. Each wallet had a transparent face revealing a grocery list along with three business cards with a fictitious person's name, title and an email address printed on them.

The wallets were dropped off in such places as banks, theaters, museums or other cultural establishments, post offices, hotels, police stations, courts of law or other public offices. Most of the activity occurred in 5-8 of the largest cities in each country, totaling approximately 400 observations per country.

Not all wallets in the field experiment were returned, however. Among the other surprises were some of the places where people were not so honest. Wallets dropped off at the Vatican and at two anti-corruption bureaus were among those that never made their way back to the "rightful owners."

Unlike other research of its kind, in which people knew they were being observed, the data in this field study was gathered from people across the world, in natural settings, who had no idea anyone was watching.

"It involves relatively high stakes in some countries. Previous studies focused on cheating in modest stakes," said Alain Cohn, assistant professor at the UM School of Information.

After getting the field results, the team surveyed more than 2,500 people in the United Kingdom, the United States and Poland to better understand why honesty matters to us more than the money.

The respondents were presented with a scenario that matched the field experiment and asked questions about how they would respond if presented with a lost wallet. Similar to the field study, those in this survey said failing to return a wallet felt like stealing when more money was involved. Enditem

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