Study finds people are more honest when they are watched -- even when the onlooker is a picture.

A recent study conducted in Britain has discovered that people are almost 300 times as honest when they feel they are being watched. 

The study, published Wednesday in the online journal Biology Letters, made use of a long-running kitty arrangement in a common room used by about 48 staff, so there was no reason for workers to suspect that an experiment was being run. The journal is published by The Royal Society, Great Britain's scientific academy.

The lone change to the setup was a poster placed above the cash box listing prices of tea, coffee and milk, with an image banner across the top that alternated each week between different pictures of flowers or images that featured eyes looking directly down on the serving table.

The eye pictures varied in the sex and head orientation of the face, but all were chosen so that the eyes seemed to look directly at the observer.

Each week, as the signs changed, the researchers recorded the amount of money collected, and the volume of milk consumed, since that was considered the best index of total drink consumption.

The team then calculated the ratio of money collected to the volume of milk consumed each week, and found that during the weeks when the poster featured pictures of eyes, people paid 2.76 times as much for their drinks as during the weeks when flowers were on display.

http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=detail&pk=EYEBALLED-06-27-05

I knew that people were less likely to steal if they felt they were being watched, yet it is interesting that even a picture of eyes or a face can "encourage" people to behave accordingly.  Keep this in mind when begging for cash on the street corner -- it is way harder to deny you money if you look me in the face!