Excuse Me, Is This Your Phone?
What we found when we lost 960 mobiles around the world.
The Reader's Digest GLOBAL PHONE TEST



Just outside a bank in Kuala Lumpur, BK Low notices a ringing mobile phone atop a plant box. The 43-year-old architect picks the phone up annd spoke up the pokes his head inside the bank to enquire loudly, "Anyone left a phone outside?"

On the other side of the world, in a square in central London's lively and cosmopolitan Soho district, another mobile phone has been mislaid next to a statue of King Charles II. CLose by, a man in his late twenties wearing a casual black jacket is feeding bread to the pigeons. He waits for a gaggle of Japanes tourists to pass by, then grabs the mobile.

Glancing around warily, he hurries away into crowded Oxford Street. He doesn't call any of the numbers in the handset's directory and its owner has not seen it since.

In Hungary's capital, Budapest, Ildiko Juhasz, a tanned, youthful-looking pensioner, finds yet another ringing mobile phone in a shopping mall. She picks it up, speaks to the woman who has dropped it and waits patiently on a bench while she comes to collect it. "I give back everything I find," Ildiko tells her. "Once I found a social security card and spent a week tracking down the person it belonged to."

In every one of these incidents, the people who had mislaid their phones were not the careless members of the public they appeared, but local Reader's Digest researches who were conducting an experiment. Reporters from the most populous cities in 32 countries left 30 mid-proced mobile phones in public places in each city. That's a total of 960 phones worldwide.

Two local reporters worked as a team - one left the phone behind in a busy public place, such as a food court, while the other observed the mobile discreetly from a distance. We rang the phones after a few minutes and waited to see if anyone would answer and return the phone, call us later on preset numbers we had programmed into the handsets - or keep the phoned for themselves; after all, they were tempting, brand-new phones with SIM cards taht would allow people to use the phones if they actually keep them.

We then aded up jow many phones we got back to get a global snapshot of how ordinary people behave when unexpectedly confronted by a classic oral dilemna: Do I try to give it back or keep it for myself?

having tested the world, what we found out surprised and intrigued us. SLOVENIA MAY BE A YOUNG COUNTRY - it gained independence from Yugoslavia as recently as 1991 ang joined the European Union only in 2004 - but the people of its capital Ljubljana certainly have an ol-fashioned sense of citizenship. This picture-postcard little city nestling in the foothills of the Alps was by far the smallest in our survey, with a population os only 267,000. Maybe that's why it finished at the top. From a nun at abus stop to a young writer at a coffee shop - who also retrieved a leather jacket our reporter had accidentally left behind - its residents were almost universally helpful, with only one of our 30 abandoned phones unreturned.

Could the citizens of a much bigger, bustling city, with all its stress and pressure, be as honest? The people of Toronto, Canada (population 5.4 million), came mighty close, returning 28 of the 30 phones we left there. "If you can hel somebody out, why not?" said 29-year-old insurance broker Ryan Demchuk, who returned a mobile phone close to TD Bank in an underground concourse. "Integrity in this city is exceptional. I lost my wallet and got it back, and I returned two wallets in a week."

In Seoul, South Korea and Stockholm, Sweden doing the right thing for the people we spoke to was part of everyday working life. Observed railway ticket inspector Lotta Mossige-Norheim, who found our mobile on a shopping street and handed it back: "I'm always calling people who've left a handset on my train."

JOSELYN PANGANIBAN WAS withdrawing cash from an ATM in a busy mall in Manilawhen she noticed the mobile phone. She looked around before picking it up but then looked relieved when the phone rang. "I was hoping the owner would call," the 26-year-old said. "I felt sorry for them and could imagine how worried they must be."

Joselyn's concern was echoed by the 23 other people who returned the phones in Manila. In fact, across Asia, two-thirds of the phones were returned immediately. From Mumbai to Singapore, most people said they returned the phones because it was the right thing to do. "It all depends on your values," said BK low, a Malaysian architect who went out of his way to return the phone he found outside a bank. "It doesnt't matter what type of phone it is, if you don't have strong values you'll keep something that doesn't belong to you."

In Mumbai, residents were so keen to demonstrate their cuty's integrity that when a man took a phone left in Manoj's general store, telling him he was going to keep it for himself, the shop keeper mobilised a group of friends to apprehend the culprit at the nearby clothes shop where he worked as a sales assistant and bring him back to face the music. "I would have returned your phone," the man tried to convince our reporter as an angry crowd chided him for his behaviour.

"Then why did you switch it off?" inquired our reporter, at which point the man gave an embarrassed laugh and ran off.

BUT NOT EVERYONE WAS so honest. In a busy mall in Causeway Bay, Hongkong, a security guard picked up our phone, asked a group of smokers if it was theirs, then wrapped it in a piece of paper. When approached by our reporter, he stammered, "What phone? I didn't see any phone. If you've mislaid something, report to Lost and Found," while clearly gripping the movile tightly in his hand.

Indeed, it appears you can't always trust a man in uniform, as he was one of six shopping centre security guards around the woorld - in cities from Buenos Aires to Sydney - whom our reporters observed pocketing handsets and failing to report them lost. An elderly security guard in Kuala Lumpur spotted the phone, quickly switched it off and then ambled over to chat to the owner of a food stall as if nothing happened. Reassuringly, however, every policeman we encountered acted honestly (much to the pleasant surprise of our Brazilian reporter in Sao Paulo, a city where cops are widely believed to be corrupt).

"There's still a lot of trust in the guys in uniform because they are duty-bound to return lost stuff to the owners," says Kam Wai Ying, from Kuala Lumpur who returned a phone she found in a staircase of a mall. "But people need to take responsibilty for their belongings and make an effort to look for them."

Wealth was no guarantee of honesty. In prosperous New Zealand, a smartly dressed woman in her fifties grabbed a "lost" mobile from a ledge in front of upmarket Auckland department store Smith and Caughey's, bolted down the street, and never attempted to contact our reporter. By contrast, a young Brazilian woman, who looked almost destitute and had three young children in tow, handed back a mobile phone she picked up in a sao Paulo park. "I may not be rich," she said, "but my children will know the value of honesty."

In many countries, people told us that they believed the young would behave worse than their elders. Yet we found that young people were just as honest as their elders. In a food court at Plaza Universidad, Mexico City, a grey-haired couple in their seventies ambled past our dropped phone, only for the elderly gentleman to dart baack and grab it. The couple ignored our reporter's phone call and made their escape, as briskly as possible, down an escalator.

But in Harlem, New York, a young black man with braids scooped our phone from the pavement and arranged to meet our reporter on a street corner that evening. Sixteen-year-old Johnnie Sparrow was accompanied by a gang of younger African-American boys who clearly looked up to him. When our reporter told them about the secret test we had put their role model through, Johnnie proudly told them, "I did the right thing."

Women were slightly more likely to return phones than men. "Females tend more to look for opportunities to improve relationships and good deeds are one way to do this.", comments Terence Shulman, lawyer and founder of the Shulman Center for Compulsive Theft and Spending in Michigan, US. "They are also less likely to have a criminal mind set."

ALL OVER THE WORLD, the most common reason people gave for returning our phone was that they too had once lost an item of value and didn't want others to suffer as they had. "I've had cars stolen three times and even the laundry from the cellar was taken," said Kristina Laakso, 51, who came to our aid in Helsinki.

estate agent Lewis Lim returned a phone abandoned in Singapore's financila district rather than leave it for someone less scrupulous to discover. "I mislaid a mobile and was sent a text message by the finder saying I could only have it back if I handed over $130 (S$200). I daren't carry expensive handsets now."

Other helpful citizens were aware how important a phone can be, irrespective of its cost, because of the personal information contained within it. Yann, a courier who discovered our phone near the offices of HSBC bank in Paris, explained, "I once found a beautiful mobile belonging to a high-ranking official at the Egyptian Embassy. It was full of telephone numbers for really important people and I returned it, of course."

Parental influence weighed heavily with some. "My parents taught me that if somehing is not yours, don't take it," said Muhammad Faizal Bin Hassan, an employee of a Singapore shopping complex where he answered our ringing phone.

Many adults accompanied by children were keen to show the youngsters how to behave when they spotted our phones. In Hounslow, west London, Mohammad Yusuf Mahmoud, 33, was with his two young daughters when he answered our call and confirmed he'd found our mobile in a busy pedestrianised shopping street. "I'm glad my kids were here to see this. I hope it sets a good example," he said.

Not everyone was quite so concerned to give a good impression to their children, however. In Amsterdam, a Dutch boy of about ten implored his parents to let him keep a phone he'd found on the Kalverstraat. They seemed in two minds, but after he'd given his mother a kiss on the cheek and a smile, they gave in.

SO, HOW DID PLANET EARTH perform in our honesty test? Everywhere we went, our reporters heard plenty of pessimism about our chances of getting our phones back. "Everything has become dishonest in Germany," complained Doreen, a Berlin assistant. Many of the Thais we interviewed in Bangkok thought we'd be lucky to see half our phones again. OUr Milan reporters were convinced that Italians would be too "cunning and deceitful" to help them out. Mexico City residents said a bad economy would make people act selfishly. And yet: In Berlin and Bangkok 21 phones out of 30 were handed back, 20 in Mexico City and Milan.

Globally, 654 moblies - that's a heartening 68 per cent - were returned to us. "Despite what the media tell us, crime is not the norm," says University of California psychologist Paul Ekman, author of "Emotions Revealed" and an expert on deception. "People want to trust and be trusted."

Ferenc Kozma wouldn't argue with that. It never occured to the 52-year-old homeless man in Budapest to keep the phone he found on a railway platform. He handed it in to a newspaper seller. "You find things and you lose things," said Kozma. "But you never lose your honesty."