Honesty Test

For six years Miss Louise Omwake, a psychology teacher at Centenary Junior College in Hackettstown, N. J., has tried to find out how honest ordinary people are. She devised a test, gave it to 198 girl students at her college. To encourage candor, she let them answer anonymously. Last week, in School and Society, Miss Omwake reported that "honesty appears to correlate with convenience." Guided by circumstances, not by a consistent moral principle, the same students seemed to be sometimes honest, sometimes not. Some findings:

> 84% said they would steal bread for hungry children if they were certain not to be caught.

> 88% said that, if they found $500 in the street, they would look for the owner.

>19% would be tempted to steal $100,000 if they could do so without being caught.

> Only 28% would tell the truth if doing so meant hurting someone's feelings.

> 54% believed the early Christian martyrs were right not to lie to save their skins.

>Students were most likely to be dishonest in their school work, which led Miss Omwake to observe that the traditional school curriculum, stressing competition for marks, "may promote dishonesty." Of her students, 33% said they would be tempted to cheat in an examination if they could get away with it; 50% would be tempted if most of their classmates cheated; 79% had actually cheated in an examination at least once.

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