Cute Babies Lower Crime

If you want to up your chances of your lost wallet being returned, carry a baby picture.

So says a study from Edinburgh, Scotland, where researchers left 240 wallets on the streets to see how many were returned to their owners. Some of the wallets contained one of four photographs: a baby, a cute puppy, a family and a portrait of an elderly couple. Other content suggested the owner had recently made a charity donation. A control set of 40 wallets held nothing additional. (All of the wallets contained raffle tickets, membership cards and discount vouchers — though none had money.)

Professor Richard Wiseman, a University of Hertfordshire psychologist who supervised the experiment, told the U.K.'s The Times that 42 percent of the 240 "lost" wallets were mailed back to their owners. Those featuring a baby picture were most likely to short-circuit the finders' keepers reaction, with 88 percent being returned. Don’t have a cute baby to snap a photo of and stick in your wallet? Don't despair — 53 percent of the wallets with a puppy photo were returned. (The rest of the stats: 48 percent of wallets with the family photo were returned; 28 percent with the elderly couple, and just 20 percent of wallets with evidence of the charity donation. The "control" wallets were the least effective in inspiring honesty — recovering only 15 percent.)

"The baby kicked off a caring feeling in people, which is not surprising from an evolutionary perspective," Wiseman, who recently studied how unromantic British men are, told The Times.

But never mind the science, even Wiseman is hip to the practical message: "If you want to increase the chances of your wallet being returned, obtain a photograph of the cutest baby you can find, and ensure that it is prominently displayed."

Deluging friends with photos of your child may now be considered community service.

Photo courtesy of Andrew Vargas via Commons Wikimedia.