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Are people in China less honest than Americans and Europeans?

“Honesty” study ranks China lowest among 40 countries, but digital habits may have played a part

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Are people in China less honest than Americans and Europeans?
Karen Chiu
This article originally appeared on ABACUS

Imagine this: A hotel receptionist is handed a lost wallet. It contains, among other things, several identical business cards with a name and email address. Will the receptionist reach out to the apparent owner of the wallet?

It turns out, the answer is more likely to be a ‘no’ when you’re in China rather than countries like the United States, Canada and Switzerland. That’s according to a new study led by a team of American and Swiss researchers who published their findings in Science last week.
A sample wallet used in the study. Researchers used local currency, and the business cards were written in the local language. (Picture: Science/ “Civic honesty around the globe”)
A sample wallet used in the study. Researchers used local currency, and the business cards were written in the local language. (Picture: Science/ “Civic honesty around the globe”)
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To be clear, the project’s main purpose wasn’t to rank countries by their level of honesty. Instead, the focus was to examine whether monetary incentives would push a person to act dishonestly, regardless of their nationality. But the result, which incidentally ranks China at the bottom of 40 countries in terms of honesty, surprised even the scientists themselves.

“It could be that the level of altruism is relatively low in China, but this is pure speculation,” researcher Alain Cohn at the University of Michigan told the South China Morning Post.
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China ranks behind 39 other countries in the study. (Picture: Science/ “Civic honesty around the globe”)
China ranks behind 39 other countries in the study. (Picture: Science/ “Civic honesty around the globe”)

So, does the paper prove that people in China are more dishonest? Not necessarily.

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