Everybody does it.

Dr. Helen starts off by critiquing an advice columnist's response to a find-a-lost-wallet-full-of-money problem, and winds up inspiring an intriguing comment thread.

Fascinating because several commenters defend the idea of keeping found money, even if the owner's identifiable.  Direct quote: 

it's hilarious what people will pretend, even behind the anonimity of comment boxes.

I am way more honest for admitting what I would do with a found wallet - not a stolen wallet but a lost wallet - than all these people here pretending to be pure.

I suppose this comes from having a moral calculus that goes like this:

    1.  I am a decent, ordinary person, certainly no worse than anyone else

    2.  If I found somebody's money and could get away with it, I'd keep it

    3.  It must be true that anybody else would do the same.

Interesting.   Commenter Rich Rostrom points out:

Personnel managers have discovered the easiest way to find potential thief/employees: ask them if they have stolen from a previous employer. Most thieves believe "everybody does it", and that claiming otherwise is obvious hypocrisy. So they confess to minor thefts, expecting a favorable response to this "honesty".

If a potential spouse says, of theft, or other serious offense, "everybody does it" - red flag time!

Job interviews are full of unhelpful-sounding questions like "Describe the worst mistake you ever made and how you recovered from it."  Basically decent people have trouble coming up with appropriate answers.  I think that these questions are designed to weed out people with severe problems.  There's a pretty wide gulf between "Ummmm... I guess it would be the time I made a clerical error that cost our company a few thousand dollars in fines" and "That's an interesting question.  I would say it was when I violated that protection order that my last boss filed against me."

Comments

[Christy P]

I come back to the idea often when I am shocked at how some people choose to behave. Once when accused of cheating in a rec league softball game the coach told us that the teams that complain the most about cheating in their opponents are the same teams that cheat themselves. People accuse others of behavior that they themselves would perform. It makes a lot of sense, really. If the thought of cheating in a rec league game never crossed your mind you wouldn't think that it was in anyone else's mind either.