Is It Possible to Run a Business on Trust?

April 14, 2006 — -- Bill Bomster has a way of doing business that might strike many people as odd at first glance.

The owner of a commercial scallop trawler and his crew put hundreds of dollars of seafood in a publicly accessible cooler in the harbor town of Stonington, Conn., make it clear where customers can leave their money -- and then walk away.

Linda Brunick runs her donut and bagel business on a similar principle. She brings them to businesses in town and lays out a spread, adding some cream cheese, and simply leaves a payment box.

No one's watching Bomster or Brunick's customers - but both proprietors say they do business this way for a reason.

"I would say 99.9 percent are honest," Bomster said. "I've had people come up and say that they didn't have change, the right change and they owed me 50 cents. And they'll leave me a little note saying they owe me 50 cents."

Brunick had some doubts at first, but she was convinced by an article by "Freakonomics" authors Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner.

Levitt points out that in the United States, people have so "many opportunities to steal, to pillage, whatever, but we don't take advantage of them."

Why? "Partly it's being caught but I think it's something deeper," he said. "Even when the chances of being caught are very, very low, people are willing to pay the money."Maybe Bomster and Brunick can trust their customers because they were taught the golden rule: Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. Or maybe it just comes naturally to them.

Psychologist Marc Hauser and economist Keith Chen designed an experiment to see if monkeys could behave the same way: Would the primates follow the golden rule and help their fellow monkeys, even when there was no immediate reward for it?

They put two tamarin monkeys in adjoining cages and set up a tray with a lever on it. A treat was put in front of one monkey, but only the other one could pull the lever that would let his companion reach the treat. The monkey that pulls the lever gets nothing for pulling. He's counting on his companion to return the favor when it's his turn.

Remarkably, Hauser and Chen discovered the monkey does return the favor. "The solution seemed to be, well, I'll scratch your back, if you'll scratch mine at some point in the future," Hauser said.