What If You Found a Lost Wallet?
Nov 2nd, 2009 • Posted in: Commentaryby Rushworth M. Kidder
Several years ago, visiting New York City, I became a statistical anomaly. It started when I got out of a cab in Manhattan and unknowingly dropped my wallet on the sidewalk. It ended several hours later with a call from an executive in a midtown office tower, saying he’d found my wallet and would return it to me if I stopped by. I did so, offering profuse thanks and a reward, which he good-heartedly declined as he wished me well.
According to a new poll on community trust from Gallup, New York is not a good place to lose your wallet. Surveying some 170,000 Americans since January 2009, Gallup asked, “If you lost a wallet or a purse that contained $200, and it was found by a neighbor, do you think it would be returned with the money in it, or not?”
Now, pause here and jot down three things. First, what do you think — yes or no? Second, in which of the 50 states do you think people would be most apt to answer yes? Finally, in which state would they be most likely to say no?
Got it? Okay, here’s what Gallup found. The top 10 most trusting states cluster in the northern tier of the West and Midwest, but they also include Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Utah and South Dakota lead the pack, with 85 percent expressing great trust in their neighbors. The top tier also includes Idaho, Montana, Iowa, North Dakota, and Wyoming. In the bottom tier are 10 states that are either large (New York, California), southern (Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, Louisiana), or both (Florida, Texas). But even in Nevada — the lowest of the bottom 10 — some 60 percent of the public still think the wallet would be returned. So here’s the first key point: Most Americans, wherever they are, trust their neighbors.
Or at least they do in statewide averages. But there seems to be a deep distinction between urban and rural populations. In Washington, DC, which Gallup also surveyed, only 43 percent of respondents express this kind of social trust. Why? The speculation is that the District of Columbia, unlike any of the 50 states, is entirely urban — and that the anonymity of city living makes it harder to know your neighbors, never mind trust them. As the Gallup researchers point out, three of the least trusting states — California, New York, and Texas — are home to seven of the nation’s largest urban population centers. Meanwhile, six of the 10 most trusting states (Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, New Hampshire, Wyoming, and Montana) are among America’s least populous. So here’s the second point: Urban living inhibits social trust.
Which explains why my New York visit was a statistical anomaly. Most people, I suspect, would say that my wallet wouldn’t have been returned. New Yorkers statewide are more than twice as likely (35 percent) as South Dakotans (15 percent) to take a cynical view of their neighbors — and probably even more so in the city. So here’s a third point: If a tally of the naysayers constitutes a kind of cynicism index, then cynicism more than doubles as you move from state to state — and may increase dramatically as you move from rural to urban.
Why does all of this matter? Because since the ethics recession began in 2008, trustworthiness and its twin, trustfulness, have loomed larger than ever in public consciousness. If we can chart a shift from trust to cynicism across U.S. regions, I suspect we can spot a similar decline across time as well. The real issues of trust today relate not to wallets but to houses, jobs, retirement accounts, banks, insurance companies — the whole bonfire of issues that underlie the recession. The real question is not, If some poor Joe lost his wallet, and someone saw what was happening, would they intervene to help him? That’s a surrogate for a deeper question: If some poor sucker signed up for a subprime mortgage and his bankers knew what was happening, would they intervene to save him?
Gallup never asked that question. But we can guess at the levels of cynicism it would provoke. The U.S. public, appalled at the deception and greed underlying the current recession, has lost enormous trust in institutions that are meant to exercise “fiduciary” responsibility — a word which comes from the Latin word for trust. Fourth point, then: The institutions in our culture that we should hold in high trust are provoking instead the greatest cynicism.
So the Gallup survey is not only about whether Sioux Falls is less cynical than Baton Rouge. That’s just a placeholder for a larger discussion: What happens to a nation as its reservoir of trust drains away? If it’s fair to say, by extrapolation, that less than half of the nation’s urban populations believe they would ever see a lost wallet again, how do they feel about the savings accounts, pension funds, and home mortgages they’ve figuratively dropped on life’s sidewalk?
Did we really expect Americans to start investing and consuming again until someone returns their lost wallets — until the institutions they thought they could trust prove trustworthy?
©2009 Institute for Global Ethics
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To paraphrase Lord John Fletcher Moulton, you can judge the ethicality of a society by the degree to which people can be trusted to obey the unenforceable. As a life-long resident of New York City, where crime has been reduced to record lows over the last 15 years, I often ask whether NYC is now a more ethical society than it was when crime went through the roof.
Perhaps a real test of “lost wallets” with scientific sampling in cities across the country would give us a true reading on where people can be most trusted to obey the unenforceable.
Thoroughly enjoy your newsletter and have a “wallet” story of my own. 10 years ago I had been unemployed for 5 months, had gone through savings, was dipping into retirement to keep up with bills and fortunate to have the kindness of family and friends who helped me considerably with occasional cash infusions to at least keep me in my apartment.
One afternoon, as I was driving down Commercial Street in Portland, I witnessed money actually flying through the air. I pulled over and safely collected $75 before deciding I could be a traffic hazard. I imagined someone with a pocketful of cash who probably exited one of the seedy pubs just down from the coffee shop, perhaps inebriated and suddenly without money to feed themselves or family.
As much as I could have used $75 at that moment I imagined someone worse off. I drove to the police station and the officer on duty was visibly stunned that I would bring it to him. I repeated that indeed I wanted to leave it in case there was a report of lost earnings and if not, would they please give it to someone who needed it. Honestly, I doubt it left the building after that! And I did leave a phone number. Anyway, I happened to mention to my landlord, who is a well recognized property owner, landlord in Portland as to what had transpired and he was so touched he comped me a month’s rent for my thoughtfulness. Now that’s a “pay forward” is it not?
Bottom line, right/right thinking and behavior have always served me well and as I get older, it gets easier to do. Thanks for your time and your thoughtful, insightful publication. I have lived in Camden a couple of times over the years and that is where I became familiar with your organization.