Honesty is the Best Policy - Unit 10 - Nothing But the Truth
B2 First · Gapped Text · Ready for B2 First 4th Edition Workbook, Macmillan Education Limited
You are going to read a newspaper article about honesty. Six sentences have been removed from the article. Choose from the sentences A-G the one which fits each gap (1-6). There is one extra sentence which you do not need to use.
Honesty is the Best Policy
After they'd been 'dropped by accident', people would then 'find' the wallets and take them to their nearest public building.
In short, no one wants to be regarded by others as a thief.
For example, if someone had their hair cut and we said we liked it, we wouldn't judge ourselves too harshly.
On the other hand, social pressure is seen to have a negative effect.
I have to admit that I would probably have shared his view.
In actual fact, data from 38 out of the 40 countries showed that the opposite was true.
Thankfully, it seems that many of us choose to do the latter.
The vast majority of people would agree that honesty is preferable to deception. On a small, relatively harmless scale, we probably wouldn't be too concerned.
On the other hand, if we were to do it on a bigger scale, say, if we found money, what would happen? How do you think you'd react? Would you pocket the cash and hope you weren't going to be found out? Or would you hand it over to the police? Before conducting an experiment on the subject of honesty by the University of Michigan, Alan Cohn, lead author and a behavioural economist, had a rather pessimistic prediction. The majority of people would take the cash, wouldn't they? That's just human nature. People are basically selfish.
Surprisingly though, in reality, people are more honest than the researchers in the study gave them credit for. So, what exactly was the test? It was a social experiment on a global scale and involved an incredible number of wallets: 17,000 were 'lost' in a total of 40 different countries.
This could be somewhere in the city such as a museum, police station, bank and so on. All the wallets contained three different amounts of cash along with a fake photo and contact details. One actually didn't contain money at all, another had around £10 and the remaining one had almost £75. If you thought the general trend would be that the wallets with no money at all were more often returned, I'm afraid you'd be wrong.
The bigger the amount of cash found by people, the higher the chance it was going to be returned. And if there was a key in it as well, the return rate increased even more. So, what is the reason for this interesting human behaviour? The answer comes down to how people are seen by others. We all have an internal voice that tells us about right and wrong and it's up to us whether we decide to ignore it or not. The thing is, the fear of our wrongdoing becoming common knowledge outweighs our desire to get some free cash.
And this label seems to become bigger as the amount found increases. In conclusion, we have the moral choice when we find something that isn't ours. We can keep it or we can hand it back.
That this is due to social pressure or some kind of inner voice telling us what is right and wrong is the obvious outcome of the experiment. I, for one, am just happy to see that my initial expectations proved to be wrong. This restores my faith in humanity, to some extent, at least.
The vast majority of people would agree that honesty is preferable to deception. On a small, relatively harmless scale, we probably wouldn't be too concerned. ___ On the other hand, if we were to do it on a bigger scale, say, if we found money, what would happen? How do you think you'd react? Would you pocket the cash and hope you weren't going to be found out? Or would you hand it over to the police? Before conducting an experiment on the subject of honesty by the University of Michigan, Alan Cohn, lead author and a behavioural economist, had a rather pessimistic prediction. The majority of people would take the cash, wouldn't they? That's just human nature. People are basically selfish. ___ Surprisingly though, in reality, people are more honest than the researchers in the study gave them credit for. So, what exactly was the test? It was a social experiment on a global scale and involved an incredible number of wallets: 17,000 were 'lost' in a total of 40 different countries. ___ This could be somewhere in the city such as a museum, police station, bank and so on. All the wallets contained three different amounts of cash along with a fake photo and contact details. One actually didn't contain money at all, another had around £10 and the remaining one had almost £75. If you thought the general trend would be that the wallets with no money at all were more often returned, I'm afraid you'd be wrong. ___ The bigger the amount of cash found by people, the higher the chance it was going to be returned. And if there was a key in it as well, the return rate increased even more. So, what is the reason for this interesting human behaviour? The answer comes down to how people are seen by others. We all have an internal voice that tells us about right and wrong and it's up to us whether we decide to ignore it or not. The thing is, the fear of our wrongdoing becoming common knowledge outweighs our desire to get some free cash. ___ And this label seems to become bigger as the amount found increases. In conclusion, we have the moral choice when we find something that isn't ours. We can keep it or we can hand it back. ___ That this is due to social pressure or some kind of inner voice telling us what is right and wrong is the obvious outcome of the experiment. I, for one, am just happy to see that my initial expectations proved to be wrong. This restores my faith in humanity, to some extent, at least.
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