<
https://cosmosmagazine.com/people/behaviour/lost-your-wallet-it-may-not-end-badly/>
"An international experiment involving over 17,000 lost wallets has revealed
that humans are far more honest and altruistic than anyone, including
professional economists, had ever imagined.
The research, published in the journal
Science, shows that our sense of self
and the desire to help others are sometimes more powerful than self-interest.
The Scottish philosopher Adam Smith placed self-interest at the heart of human
behaviour in his 1776 work
The Wealth of Nations.
Classical economics still holds that rational self-interest is the key to
economic activity and will, as a by-product, generate social benefits; but such
assumptions don’t always lead to accurate predictions about human behaviour.
Alain Cohn and Christian Lukas Zünd of the University of Michigan, in the US,
Michel André Maréchal of the University of Zurich, in Switzerland, and David
Tannenbaum, of the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, in the US have carried
out a series of studies that show self-interest is only part of the picture."
Via Esther Schindler.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
