How Polite Are We?

Are good manners dead? We checked in 35 cities around the globe -- and got some surprising answers.

Are We Socially Inept?

It's lunchtime in Mexico City and a young man follows a slim girl wearing dark glasses into a restaurant. Without looking behind her, she lets the heavy glass door swing closed, almost smashing him in the face.

In a stationery shop in Seoul, South Korea, meanwhile, a female customer wants to buy a disposable pen. It's a minor purchase, but 56-year-old store owner Jang Byung-eun takes the time to talk her through a variety of different models. When she makes her purchase, he says a friendly "Thank you."

Rain and wind are lashing the Nollendorfplatz, central Berlin, as estate agent Nicole Hatzijordanou, 34, struggles through the morning rush-hour crowds, her broken right arm in plaster after she slipped on ice. Ahead of her, a young woman drops a yellow folder, scattering papers everywhere. Dozens of commuters walk on by, but Nicole rushes over and picks up the sodden documents, gently shaking the water off each one. When thanked, she jokes, "Well, I still have one good arm!"

Our Three Tests

The young man risking a broken nose, the customer in Korea, and the woman with the unwieldy documents were no ordinary members of the public. Each was a Reader's Digest researcher taking part in a unique test to see how polite people are around the world.

From Thailand to Finland, from Buenos Aires to London, people worry that courtesy is becoming a thing of the past. Service in shops has become surly, they say, youngsters have lost respect for their elders. Lynne Truss, in her international best-seller Talk to the Hand, claims that we live in "an age of lazy moral relativism combined with aggressive social insolence" where common courtesies are "practically extinct."

But is such pessimism justified?

We sent undercover reporters -- half of them men, half women -- from Reader's Digest editions in 35 countries to assess the citizens of their most populous city. In each location we conducted three tests:

• We walked into public buildings 20 times behind people to see if they would hold the door open for us.



• We bought small items from 20 shops and recorded whether the sales assistants said "Thank you".



• We dropped a folder full of papers in 20 busy locations to see if anyone would help pick them up.

To let us compare cities, we awarded one point for each positive outcome and nothing for a negative one, giving each city a maximum score of 60. We did not attempt a strict scientific survey; it was the world's biggest real-life test of common courtesy, with more than 2,000 separate tests of actual behavior. Here's what we discovered.

Wonderful Town

They have a reputation for being big-headed, but New Yorkers showed they are big-hearted too, by finishing first in our global courtesy ratings.

They placed in the top five in all three tests and were particularly polite at holding doors open, with only two people failing to do so. "I don't even think about it," said syndications assistant Kirsten Chieco, who held the door of one of the Starbucks coffee shops where the tests were done. "Most New Yorkers are courteous."

Surprised? Not former mayor Ed Koch. Asked to react to our findings, Koch pointed to a rise in New York niceness since the terror attacks on the city five years ago. "After 9/11, New Yorkers are more caring. They understand the shortness of life."

The second most courteous place: prosperous Zurich, Switzerland. In a feat matched only in Stockholm, Sweden, Zurich shop assistants thanked us for our purchase in every store we visited. Old-fashioned customer service was very much in evidence.

"I am friendly to people whether they are dressed shabbily or wearing an expensive fur coat," said Frieda Lütolf after we purchased $2 worth of chocolate from exclusive confectioners Sprüngli. "Everyone I deal with is served attentively -- even those who are rude to me."

Swiss shopworkers' good manners were often inspired by their pride in their work. "I have been here for 40 years," explained tobacconist's manager Ursula Gross. "I like it, so I have always arrived on time and always been friendly and courteous."

T for Tolerance

Toronto, Canada, came third among our 35 cities. In the trendy Queen Street West area we were helped with a dropped folder by Mike Parsons, a 28-year-old street artist. "I sit out here doing drawings all day and I find people to be really good and cheerful. Toronto is very tolerant, very polite."

Litigation lawyer Mark Ellis, 48, agreed. "I've seen more politeness in Canada than in many other places I've been, particularly Europe," he told our male reporter after holding the door open in the financial district.

Still, two European cities – Berlin, Germany, and Zagreb, Croatia – did well in our tests, tying with São Paulo, Brazil, for fourth place. Zagreb residents were world leaders in helping with dropped papers. Josip, aged 72, tried to bend down to pick up our female reporter's documents despite having arthritis and a bad back. "I always help someone in trouble," he said, "if I can!"

In São Paulo, even petty criminals were polite. As we bought a pair of cheap sunglasses from a trader at an illegal market on 25 de Março Street, shouts rang out that the police were coming. The merchant gathered up his goods to flee -- but not before thanking us for our $2.

The region that most lacked courtesy: Asia. Eight out of nine cities there finished in the bottom 11.

In last place was Mumbai, India, where courtesy in shops was particularly lacking. When our female reporter bought a pair of plastic hair clips at a convenience store, sales assistant Shivlal Kumavat turned his back on her as soon as she paid. Asked why, the 31-year-old was unapologetic: "Madam, I am not an educated guy. I hand goods over to the customers and that's it."

In a government-run supermarket a young female employee lied that she hadn't seen what had happened when asked why she didn't help our reporter pick up his papers. Another worker stepped on them.

"That's nothing," said the store's security guard. "In Mumbai, they'll step over a person who has fallen in the street."

Doors Wide Shut

What was most striking in Asia was how few people held doors open for us. Every city except Hong Kong finished in the bottom ten in the rankings and no one had a success rate higher than 40 percent. Many Asians simply don't include door-holding in their notions of courtesy. "How can we measure someone's value simply by whether they hold a door open?" observed 19-year-old student John Christopher Padilla, in the Philippine capital, Manila.

Yoon Mi-ri, a 43-year-old businesswoman, held open the door of a shop in Seoul only because "I often go overseas on work trips and it's basic manners over there. In Korea, people don't pay much attention to such things."

But we found plenty of discourtesy outside Asia too. Moscow, Russia, and Bucharest, Romania, ranked as the least polite European cities. When an affluent-looking lady in her forties failed to hold a door in Moscow's Prospekt Vernadskogo, she chided us: "I'm not a doorman. It's not my job to hold doors. If someone gets hurt, they should be quicker on their feet."

What can we learn from our results? While two of the world's most affluent cities -- Zurich and New York -- came top of our rankings, we found plenty of courtesy in poorer areas too. In Johannesburg, South Africa, our researcher concluded: "The better dressed the person, the less likely he or she was to help. This applied across the board, irrespective of race."

Nonetheless, it was prosperous cities that were at the top of our rankings. Charles Mosley, editor of British etiquette publisher Debrett's, ventures this explanation: "Wealthier cities aren't generally as crowded and competition for resources is less intense."

But being in a hurry isn't always a barrier to helping people. Tests carried out during morning rushhours produced almost as many positive results as those performed off-peak. For Gary Webber, a 46-year-old British local government worker who helped gather up our papers during the London rushhour, this was down to empathy. "You looked as if you were in a hurry. I was in a hurry. I thought, Let's work together and get us both on our way."

Many older people we encountered complained that courtesy was less prevalent among the young. But we found that the under-40s were, by a small margin, the most helpful of all age groups -- and the over-60s the least. "The younger, the more courteous it seems," says our researcher in Finland. "So, no more whinging about the younger generation not being up to standard!"

Women were slightly more courteous than men and, oddly, both groups were significantly more polite towards their own sex. Some men told us they worried about patronizing modern independent females. Perhaps that's why men over 60, supposedly brought up in a more polite era, were the least likely of any group to hold a door for our female researchers.

Courtesy levels in larger shops were roughly similar to those in smaller establishments. In a Sydney, Australia, branch of Woolworths, cashier Reena had a huge smile for every customer and thanked us very cheerily. But in a tiny music shop in Milan we were ignored for ten minutes by the middle-aged shop assistant, who pretended to be busy stock-taking before he deigned to sell us a plectrum.

Globally, around 74 per cent of shop assistants said thank you. The most common reason given was that if you were nice to customers they would come back. "After the Argentine economic crisis of 2002, I would never risk losing a sale," said Buenos Aires toy-shop owner Amanda Herrera.

Fear of Crime

Our other two tests produced less heartening worldwide results. Just over half of people held doors open for us and only one third helped pick up our papers. Many in the latter category said they were too busy or couldn't be bothered to stop, but a significant minority was more scared of crime -- or being seen as a criminal -- than rude. "I've heard that pickpockets use tricks like that," said a 50-year-old woman in Prague, capital of the Czech Republic. "One drops something, you help them pick it up and their accomplice robs you while you're not looking."

So did the world pass our courtesy test? Overall our 35 cities showed it 55 percent of the time. "Common courtesy is the oil that keeps society running," says one social values expert. If so, our check of the level of the world's courtesy suggested that, in most places, there's plenty of oil in the engine, but some cities could use a top-up. Some of our researchers were disappointed by the treatment they received from their compatriots. Our French reporters were so upset with the lack of help with dropped papers in Paris that they considered abandoning the test altogether. But elsewhere our researchers were pleasantly surprised. "It was great to find that the vast majority of our subjects not only passed the test," says Salvador García of Mexico City, "but said they think we are part of a culture of kindness despite our daily problems."

An example of this kindness was shown in the same city by pastry shop worker Rodolfo Mateo Santiago, 21. He thanked our researcher for her purchase of a bottle of water and revealed that he had inherited his belief in courtesy from his grandmother, who had told him: "The most beautiful thing you can give another human being is a genuine smile. Live your life by this motto and you will see wonderful results."