Baby Pictures Encourage the Return of Lost Wallets

Our happy hour fact to amaze your drinking buddies with.

People are far more likely to return a lost wallet if they find a baby picture inside it.

Scottish researchers planted 240 "lost" wallets all over the city of Edinburgh. Each wallet had the same contents, aside from a picture in the clear plastic window. Eighty-eight percent of the wallets that featured a baby pic were returned, as opposed to 53 percent with a puppy, 48 percent with a family and 28 percent with a photo of an elderly couple.

Scientists believe that people are evolutionary coded to feel empathy for babies, and that accounts for this discrepancy in return rates.

From a purely economic standpoint, a picture of someone else's baby works best. A real one is going to leave you feeling like you're constantly losing money anyway.

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