Bethesdans Honest 86 Percent of the Time in Informal Test

We know how honest Bethesdans are when out and about on the street—about 91 percent honest, according to an informal National Honesty Index test carried out last summer by Honest Tea.

In that honesty test, Honest Tea set up self-service tea kiosks outside the Barnes and Noble at Woodmont and Bethesda avenues and noted the percentage (91) of people who paid for the bottles of tea they took.

But when inside a shop, are Bethesdans even more honest?

According to a new informal test by Honest Tea and Boloco, they could be less so, a Boloco news release stated.

On Oct. 3, Boloco Bethesda hosted an Honest Tea kiosk inside its store at 4930 Elm St., inviting customers to—on the honor code—take a bottle of tea either for free or pay $1 for it. The percentage of customers paying for the bottles in this test was only 86 percent, the news release reported.

This was the first time Honest Tea took its National Honesty Index social experiment inside a retail location. But the Bethesda Boloco wasn't the only Boloco hosting an Honest Tea kiosk that day. There also was one inside a Wellesley, MA, Boloco on Oct. 3.

Why Wellesley? Well, Honest Tea co-founder and TeaEO Seth Goldman, who lives in Bethesda, is from Wellesley. "I was especially interested in the results, since I grew up in Wellesley," Goldman said.

As it turned out, the honesty index of customers at the Wellesley Boloco on Oct. 3 was only 85 percent—one percentage point lower than that of customers at the Bethesda Boloco.

Honest Tea "developed the National Honesty Index to see how honest people are when they think no one is watching. ... While the results may not be 100 percent scientific, the goal is to provide fun and interesting insight about the participants, who in this case were the globally inspired burrito eaters of Bethesda and Wellesley," Boloco's statement reported.

"Since opening our doors in 1997, we’ve always strived to interact '100 percent honestly' with our guests," Boloco CEO John Pepper said. "We had so much fun reversing the roles for the day and seeing how honestly our guests acted when they thought no one was watching. Honest Tea is a partner of ours, and it was great to work with them to bring their well-known social experiment into our restaurants."

Goldman added that "[we] had fun trying out the National Honesty Index in a restaurant context. Boloco’s fun, fresh atmosphere was the perfect setting."

Do these findings surprise you? Were you one of the unwitting participants in the study?