Picture this: you're working a slow shift in a hotel lobby when someone hurriedly approaches the front desk.
They found a lost wallet around the corner, but they're in a rush and don't have time to follow up.
They ask if you can handle it and then run off.
Looking at the wallet you see it contains a key, a grocery list, about $13, and three business cards with a name and email you assume belong to the wallet's owner.
So, what do you do?
Between 2013 and 2016, over 17,000 front-desk workers around the globe were faced with this choice, becoming unwitting participants in a massive study of honesty.
And the results surprised top economists and the researchers running the experiment.
But to understand what these groups were expecting, we need to spend a little time defining honesty.
We typically think of honesty in terms of actively telling the truth in our interpersonal relationships.
But in fact, every healthy society relies on a shared foundation of honesty.
