Toronto Gets Second Place in Honesty Test

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As mentioned in Tuesday's Morning Brew, an International study by Reader's Digest found Toronto in second place for honesty.

The not-so-scientific but still sort-of interesting test worked like this: A brand new, totally usable phone is left and watched from a distance. Once picked up, those crazy Reader's Digest reporters give the cell a ring and see if the city dweller would pick up the phone and return it to the calling tester who claimed they lost it. The more phones that got returned, the more honest the city was deemed.

As I expected, we're pretty honest. Torontonians returned 28 out of 30 phones found, getting us second place out of populated cities in 28 countries. We lost out to the capital city of Slovenia, Ljubljana - they returned all but one phone to get first place.

The only other Canadian city on the list, Montreal, got fifth place. Across all of the cities, a surprising 68% of 'lost' phones were returned. On the low side, don't lose your cell phone in Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong - both only returned 13 out of 30 phones.

The best thing about returning a Blackberry a friend and I found in a cab to its owner was the feeling of being good, big-city-dwelling honest human beings (and the bottle of pricey wine the very grateful owner insisted we have).

Photo: beemphoto.com from the blogTO Flickr Pool

Reader Reviews and Comments

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I had a sneaking suspicion that those Ljubljanawegians were more honest.

Posted by: Ben at July 26, 2007 8:37 AM

DAMN YOU Ljubljana, you have stolen my thunder once again!!!

Posted by: Matt at July 26, 2007 10:10 AM

  My wallet fell out of my pocket 2 days ago at college and ossington.  I tried to buy some cans of beer at the beer store and couldnt find my wallet.  I biked back to my house and an honest torontonian arrived 2 minutes behind me with my wallet.  He found the address and biked to return it.  The money still inside.  Modest Torontonians would prefer not to be told they are honest.....it is just the way things should be.  Cheers.

Posted by: bill williams at July 26, 2007 12:01 PM

Funny this topic should come up today’s Blog. I was riding on the bus this morning and a student dropped her pen (a nice one too) - two guys near her picked it up and alerted her just before she got off the bus.  Being a typical klutz myself I can definitely relate to what Bill Williams experienced, I’m very proud to live in a country where we are frequently surrounded by good Samaritans.  Canadians totally RULE!  :)

Posted by: Lori Kong at July 26, 2007 1:39 PM

I lost my camera in Tokyo a few years ago.  The person that found it looked through the card, saw a photo of the hotel I was staying in, went to the hotel and showed them a photo of me to see if they may have recognized me.  Once he had figured out who I was, he got my address from the hotel and mailed my camera (in priority shipping!) all the way back from Tokyo.  Now that's some honesty there. 

Posted by: Sameer Vasta at July 27, 2007 12:16 AM

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