Louisville Ties for 4th Place in ‘National Honesty Index’

Louisville receives top marks from Honest Tea’s national social experiment.

Honest tea recently conducted an experiment in which they traveled to 60 different cities throughout the 50 states, setting up an unmanned kiosk offering $1 bottles of their beverages, asking customers to operate on the honor system.  The results were compiled into the “National Honesty Index“.

At each kiosk, they gathered information about the number of people who paid (or not) in addition to observable characteristics of kiosk visitors.  The experiment also included an online component meant to test the honesty of people on the Internet through a Facebook application, where people were offered a coupon in exchange for sharing an inspirational quote on their timeline. In total, the experiment involved over 28,000 participants.

Honolulu, Hawaii, received top marks for the second year in a row with 100% honesty.  Four cities tied for second place with 99% honesty while four others tied for third with 98% honesty.  Louisville tied with six other cities for fourth place with 97% honesty at the kiosks.

Overall, Americans were 95% honest, up from 92% last year.  Additional results indicate that:

• Females were more honest than males (95% vs 93%)
• Blonds were more honest (95%) vs brunettes or bald visitors (each 94%), the gray haired (93%), red heads (92%) or those with black hair (91%).
• Web participants were more honest than kiosk visitors in NY (98% vs 91%) and less honest (91% vs 95%) in Chicago.
• Puppy lovers were more honest (98%) than cat people (95%)
• Viewers of COPS were far more honest (100%) than viewers of Homeland (90%).
• Honesty varied greatly among people with different relationship statuses:
  • Separated:  100%
  • Divorced:  98%
  • In a relationship/”it’s complicated”:  96%
  • Married or single:  95%
  • Engaged:  94%

For full results, visit www.thenationalhonestyindex.com or see the infographic below.