Cute Children Help You Get Your Wallet Back

By Jill Harness in Baby & Kids, Science & Tech on Jul 12, 2009 at 2:26 pm

If you’ve ever lost your wallet, you know what a pain it is to cancel all your cards and get them reordered. You know how annoying it is to go to the DMV and get a new driver’s license. You probably also know how much of a bummer it can be to lose important phone numbers, photos, tickets stubs and cash you had in there too.

Fortunately, scientists have come up with a great way to increase your likelihood of getting your wallet back -put cute kids pictures in it. Adorable images of children trigger a person’s empathy and their “compassionate instinct towards vulnerable infants that people have evolved to ensure the survival of future generations.”

Wallets with a cute baby pic were sent back 90% of the time, whereas those with no images only had a one out of seven chance of reuniting with their previous owner.

Link Via Consumerist

Tags: babies, children, Photos, returned wallets, science, studies

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seefish3
Jul 12th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Its terrifying how easily we’re manipulated by images…

So who’s the girl with the friend/enemy t-shirt, again?
Johnny Cat
Jul 12th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
I also heard that some wallets had evidence of charity donations in them. Those wallets’ return rate was unchanged, so I guess it’s not equivalent to the whole ensuring the survival thing.
Vonskippy
Jul 12th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
I keep a “If Found please contact the CDC for immediate decontamination instructions” card. That and my Lab ID pretty much means an immediate phone call.
Debbie
Jul 12th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
Beautiful! This post certainly hits home.

Late one afternoon I received a call to my office from a woman in St. Louis MO (my office is in Newark, Delaware.) This woman had found a wallet.

The woman had gone through the wallet and had found a business card with the number of our facility.

It turns out that the wallet belonged to the head of HR at our facility.

Knowing that “Steve” and his family were vacationing in St. Louis, I gave him a call. He met up with the woman later that evening and recovered his wallet intact.

Here’s the kicker … Steve told me the woman commented on what a lovely family he had!

Although Steve recovered his wallet face to face the original post did not suggest what percentage of the time the returned wallets had the money sent back with them

Great Post!
Bobo
Jul 13th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
what if it’s a picture of dakota fanning?
wangyan
Sep 21st, 2009 at 4:34 am
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