In the 2009 movie 'The Invention of Lying' the protagonist, Mark Bellison (Ricky Gervais) lives in a fictional era where there are no lies and malice. Anna McDoogles, his girlfriend bluntly confesses how unattractive and unsuccessful he is without any guilt or conscience coming in the way.
That was a fictional time when everyone was truthful. However, the real-world scenario is a lot different from the reel-world (obviously). Lies have become a part of our lives. A lot of personality tests both online and offline can help you measure your integrity.
But how can you measure the sincerity of the city you live in?
Mark Twain once said, "Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it." The folks at Readers Digest decided to test the famous saying and conducted a simple experiment across several countries and ranked the most honest cities of the world.
Apparently, the surveyors "dropped" 12 wallets near parks, shopping malls and sidewalks of each of the selected 16 cities. Every wallet had a phone number, a family photo, coupons, business cards and $50 in it.
They waited and observed the number of people calling back to return the wallet in each of the cities to determine the most honest and sincere places. This is what they found (most to least honest):
1. Helsinki, Finland (11 of 12 wallets returned)
2. Mumbai, India (9 of 12 wallets returned)
3. Budapest, Hungary and New York City, U.S. (8 of 12 wallets returned)
4. Moscow, Russia and Amsterdam, the Netherlands (7 of 12 wallets returned)
5. Berlin, Germany and Ljubljana, Slovenia (6 of 12 wallets returned)
6. London, England and Warsaw, Poland (5 of 12 wallets returned)
7. Bucharest, Romania, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Zurich, Switzerland (4 of 12 wallets returned)
8. Prague, Czech Republic (3 of 12 wallets returned)
9. Madrid, Spain (2 of 12 wallets returned)
10. Lisbon, Portugal (1 of 12 wallets returned)
- list courtesy: TIME
The results are quite surprising because some of the cities that are touted to be the safest fared poorly in this simple experiment, for example: Zurich. Meanwhile, while India is thought to be one of the most corrupt and dishonest countries and Mumbai came in second!
Readers Digest said that roughly 50 percent of the wallets dropped were returned.
The world isn't that bad a place after all!
