Does the amount of cash in a lost wallet influence how likely a person is to return it? Classical economic theories suggest that the greater the appeal, the less likely we are to be honest—but a new study turns the idea on its head, finding altruism(利他主义), and a powerful hate for viewing oneself as a “thief” outweigh the financial attraction.

A team of researchers conducted a huge experiment concerning 355 cities in 40 countries. More than 17,000 identical wallets were dropped off at public places, each containing a grocery list, a key, and three business cards in the local language using made-up names and an email address. Some had no money while others contained the equivalent (等值) of $13.45.

According to the research, people on average returned 40% of wallets with no money in them but 51%with money. It also shows extreme differences between countries. But although rates of people’s honesty varied greatly from country to country, one thing remained remarkably constant: wallets with money, as opposed to no money, raised reporting rates.

In the US, the UK and Poland, they repeated the experiment with even more money: $94.15, which increased reporting rates by an average of 11% compared to the smaller amount. They also found that having a key expanded reporting rates by 9.2%.

The findings, which run counter to a fundamental principle of classical economics, suggest honesty, altruism and self-image can sometimes be more influential than economic self-interest.

A purely economic approach to behavior suggests people would keep the wallets with the larger amounts of money due to the increased financial reward, but economics often doesn’t account for a person’s sense of honesty or self-image, according to behavioral scientists. Altruism also influenced the findings, the researchers say. Since the key is valuable to the owner but not the finder, this pointed toward an altruism concern in addition to the cost of negatively updating one’s self image.

【小题1】What does the author intend to do in Paragraph 2?

A．Introduce a new topic for discussion.

B．Add some background information.

C．Describe a widely conducted experiment.

D．Provide the research results for the readers.

【小题2】What’s the average reporting rate of a wallet with $94.15 inside?

A．11%.	B．20.2%.
C．51%.	D．62%.

【小题3】What does the underlined phrase “run counter to” in Paragraph 5 mean?

A．Go against.	B．Account for.
C．Agree with.	D．Focus on.

【小题4】What’s the main idea of the text?

A．Classical economic theories have already been out of date.

B．People are more likely to return a lost wallet with more cash.

C．An experiment conducted worldwide proves people’s altruism.

D．Rates of people’s honesty vary greatly from country to country.