The mean streets of the city might not be so mean after all, a study suggests. Researchers have found that you are as likely to be helped by a stranger in urban Britain as in much smaller towns.
In one of the biggest studies of its kind, scientists carried out nearly 1,400 experiments in neighbourhoods across 12 cities and 12 towns. Three types of test were designed to gauge the kindness of strangers.
The first involved envelopes with hand-written addresses being left in the street to see if passers-by would post them. For the second, a researcher would drop a stack of postcards to see whether a stranger would help retrieve them. The third involved a researcher trying to cross the road and recording when