Excuse Me, Is This Your Phone? (page 2 of 3)

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Empathy and Human Behavior

Doesn't sound like a rigorous scientific study, you say? We don't disagree. But it is a reasonable, real-world test of human behavior around the globe.

So what were the results of this exercise? The average rate at which phones were returned per city: 68 percent. In other words, two-thirds of those who picked up a phone had an instinct to help. Age and income had no bearing on the subjects' response. Women were slightly more likely than men to return a phone.

The highest-ranking city happened to be the smallest: Ljubljana, Slovenia. Twenty-nine of 30 phones were returned in this picture-postcard city in the foothills of the Alps, home to just 267,000 people . The Slovene helpful streak extended beyond the parameters of the magazine's mission: In one case, a young waiter at a coffee shop returned a phone and a leather jacket accidentally left behind by our reporter.

Not that a city's size mattered much. In Toronto (population: 5.4 million), we got back 28 of 30 phones. "If you can help someone out, why not?" said Ryan Demchuk, a 29-year-old insurance broker, one of those to return a handset.

Regardless of the country, the most common reason people gave for returning a phone was that they had lost items -- or had them stolen.

"I've had cars stolen three times, and even the laundry from the cellar was taken," said Kristiina Laakso, 51, who returned a phone in Helsinki, Finland.

(I know how she feels. I myself once picked up a cell phone I found lying in the gutter in my New York neighborhood. I called one of the contact numbers programmed into the phone and, within minutes, was handing it over to the father of the teenager who had dropped it on the street earlier that day. He was happy to get it back, and I felt good about returning it. I also hoped that my good deed would be repaid the next time my teenage son misplaced his own cell phone.)

• Special Report: How Polite Are We?
• Are good manners dead? We checked in 35 cities around the globe -- and got some surprising answers.
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• More Uncommon Courtesy
• We keep hearing about the death of civility -- but it's alive and well in a place you'd least expect.
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• Chart: Phones Returned, City by City
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