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Show Only One in Five Df Bus Passengers Found Truly Honest MILWAUKEE, WIS. How honest hon-est is the average bus rider? To find out, two psychology students stu-dents at the University of Wisconsin Wiscon-sin in Milwaukee "planted" wallets wal-lets 100 times in city busses. The pocketbooks contained no money but carried personal papers and full identification of the owner. Here's what happened: Wallet taken to bus driver 59 times. Wallet brought to owner's home eight times. Wallet kept 19 times. Wallet inspected, then put back on seat 14 times. The student experimenters did the work as part of the sophomore psychology class requirements. The objective was not so much results re-sults as learning the methods of psychological research. The experimenters, with the knowledge of the bus driver, placed wallets surreptitiously on seats, as if they had been dropped, when the buses were nearly empty. Then they waited in the back of the bus to see what would happen. Their report contained two generalizations: gen-eralizations: Boys from 16 years old down tended to keep the wallets, not return re-turn them. Persons traveling in groups were more apt to take the wallets th. driver than persons traveling alone. The students attributed this to force of group opinion, not necessarily nec-essarily to individual honesty. Well dressed and poorly dressed persons seemed to have about the same ratio of honesty, the students found. They did not experiment with purses containing money. Bus drivers driv-ers told them the chances of getting get-ting money back would be slim. Most wallets taken to the bus drivers driv-ers contain little or no cash, the students were told. |