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The average person is more honest than we think – and is actually more likely to hand in a found wallet if it has more money in it. This is probably partly down to altruism, but also because most people don’t want to be considered a thief.

If you find a wallet with no money and don’t return it, you’re just lazy, but when the wallet contains cash, it feels like stealing, says of the University of Zurich in Switzerland.

Maréchal, along with of the University of Michigan and their colleagues turned in over 17,000 “lost” wallets to institutions in cities across 40 countries. The wallets each contained a unique business card with contact details of a fictional owner, and some contained a small amount of cash. On the whole, wallets containing money were returned 51 per cent of the time, compared to 40 per cent of those without cash, the team found.

In another experiment, the team loaded some wallets with a large amount of cash – worth US$94.15. They were surprised to find that these wallets were even more likely to be handed back than those containing money worth US$13.45. Forty-six per cent of wallets with no money were returned, compared to 61 per cent of wallets with a small amount of cash and 72 per cent of those with the big money.

Leaving a key in a wallet also increased the likelihood of its return. This suggests that there is some altruism at play, says Maréchal. “People care about the owner of the wallet,” he says. But surveys conducted by the team indicate that people are more likely to return higher values of cash because they don’t like the thought of stealing.

The proportion of returned wallets did vary between countries. People living in countries with colder climates and longer winters were more likely to return wallets, for instance, as were those living in places with higher rates of primary education. But these findings are only correlations, and the team can’t yet explain the differences.

When the team asked 299 Americans to guess the results of their study, they found that people generally predict that others will pocket the wallet if it holds more cash. Even the economists they surveyed made similar predictions. “People have a pessimistic view of human behaviour, but this is a positive [finding],” says Maréchal.

Even so, he doesn’t recommend keeping more cash in your wallet to boost your chances of getting it back should you misplace it. “It’s still better to have less money in your wallet in case it’s not returned,” he says.