Civic honesty around the globe

This thread has had a huge influx of comments from new accounts in the last 24 hours—over 250 and counting. They are all, I think, critical of the study. Many have been unsubstantive, but many have had interesting things to say.

Normally we'd consider closing the thread in a case like this, to prevent it from being brigaded. But this is an unusual case and I'm curious to see how far it goes.

In case any of the new commenters happens to read this: I'm the lead moderator of Hacker News. Would you mind sharing with us how you found out about this discussion? It's unusual for us to see so much activity in a thread that is already several days old, and I'm curious to find out what happened.

I do hope people calm down. At least write in English. For me I googled the title after I saw the paper from Science online during weekend. I have one major question: why does failing to send email equal to civic dishonest behavior. How the alternative explanation 'passive waiting strategy' is taken into account in their experiment or is it counted as part of civic dishonesty? I found here the author having fair discussions and being active. Then I started my post. Unfortunately I guess after so many opinions being expressed, some of which with strong emotions, it is too overwhelming for the author of the paper to reply.

Thanks for the reply (and welcome to Hacker News)! So if I understand correctly, you ran across the paper because you're a regular reader of Science online, then Googled the title, and Google pointed you to the HN thread? I wonder if that was also the case for the others. My guess was that the HN link either appeared in a media story or started circulating on social media.

The more I look at it, the more I think what happened in the comments below is a remarkable example of cross-cultural communication. Not all of the communication was very high quality, of course, but that was to be expected under the circumstances.

I'd guess that the author is no longer checking the thread, because it's so rare for one of these threads to spark back up again after several days. I doubt that he was overwhelmed, because he was responding openly to criticism earlier, and it would surely be an interesting learning experience.

p.s. Your posts in the thread were very good: thoughtful and substantive, which is what we're looking for here. I hope you'll stick around HN long enough to see if it satisfies your intellectual curiosity. That's the purpose of the site: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

I mostly click on HN articles via Facebook, but I don't actively engage in discussions. I also happen to come across a lot of discussion on Chinese social media, like zhihu.

The news has been trending on Chinese sites for days, and when it's something as sensational as "China ranked lowest in global HONESTY study", people started to ask why, many went ahead and read the paper, found potential flaws in the design of the study, and wanted their questions answered. And when valid questions are not yet being addressed, many start to question the motivation behind this paper; the motivation of using labels like "honesty", that clearly has moral implications; the motivation behind Science publishing it, etc. Did the author exclude Japan because the result differed drastically from what was expected? Did the author include China because the result conveniently confirms the stereotypes? Are there any ethical concerns for such studies? After all, this seems to be a study about how likely it is for hotel staff to email the owner of the lost wallet in different countries, but it is being phrased into something much bigger.

Not saying those are real motivations of the paper, just emotions and speculation running wild in Chinese forums, then people get a bit angry, because they feel it's unjust, and they want to look for ways to communicate outside of Chinese social media.

Anyways, thanks for still keeping the discussion open. Most just want to have their voice heard, as they feel very, very strongly about it. And a possible explanation of commenting in Chinese is to force native English speakers to look up the translation, some sort of reference to how the study is conducted in English, even in China.

Because this topic is becoming one of the hottest topic in Chinese ask and answer platform “zhihu”. I realized some answers mentioned this website because one of the authors in paper answers some questions. The answers from the author of the paper enraged us，because his explainnation was ridiculous and full of prejudice. As a email unfriendly country, even though Chinese may have email address, it doesn’t mean we want to use it in normal life. Besides, as far as I know, most people work in recipotions do not even have a email from the work place. Another answer is about japan， it is even more ridiculous. China and japan share a similar culture, the authors exclude japan because they found people will give the wallet to police booth. In china we usually give the wallet to lost and found box. I do not see the difference between police office and the box at all. Those are the main questions Chinese want to ask, and we need a answer. Sorry for leaving so many similar comments below this topic, but we want a reasonable answer.

Thanks for the information. So what happened is that the paper became a hot topic in a Chinese discussion forum, and some people there linked to this Hacker News thread because one of the authors was commenting here? Please correct me if I've misunderstood.

I'd never heard of Zhihu. When you say it's a question-and-answer forum, that makes me think of Quora. I wonder how it would compare to that, or even to HN.

Thanks for the reply. What you're saying seems consistent with what some of the other commenters are saying (e.g. what kiki1124 wrote here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20271586). So that seems to be the explanation for what happened.

Yes， Zhihu is like a Chinese version Quora. I do not know why others come here to express their opinions. For me, because I feel it is rude and inappropriate to send a email to the author, that is why I choose HN for seeking the answers(Hoping author may read my questions and answer me). About Zhihu, I would say more commercial than Quora, reddit and HN. A lot pepole run their account as business, for example write novels, sale clothes, psychological counseling... And there are a lot high educated people answer questions from many different fields. Otherwise most Chinese would not even realize this paper in Science.

Hi, I came across this site because I read an article on WeChat, the most commonly used social media in China, that directed me into this website. I believe most of the comments by newly registered Chinese users would be the same.

Thanks for the reply—that's fascinating. Is it possible to get a link to that article?

Thank you! Is it possible to get a link to the Zhihu thread that mentioned Hacker News?

Here is the link to one of the answers that mentioned Hacker News, https://www.zhihu.com/question/330671869/answer/725494839

Thanks!