杏吧原创

RIO DE JANEIRO is one of the most violent cities in the world, notorious for its high crime rate and myriad social ills. It may surprise you, then, to learn that it is also the friendliest. If you fall into trouble in Rio, the chances are better than in any other city that a Good Samaritan will help you out.

Sounds unlikely? It all comes down to simp谩tico, a Brazilian word that describes a person who possesses certain social qualities such as friendliness and openness. In Latin America, simp谩tico is considered a good thing to be, and helping strangers is a good way of demonstrating it. And Rio de Janeirans have it in spades, according to a group of social psychologists who studied the way people treat strangers in 23 cities around the world.

How do you measure the kindness of strangers? Led by Robert Levine of California State University at Fresno, the team spent six years walking the streets conducting helpfulness tests. These included 鈥渋nadvertently鈥� dropping pens, feigning blindness or an injured leg, and leaving stamped addressed letters on the street. The results showed dramatic differences in people鈥檚 willingness to help.

For example, in Rio, Madrid and San Jos茅 in Costa Rica 鈥� second only to Rio in the simp谩tico league 鈥� people helped a 鈥渂lind鈥� person across the street every time. But in Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur, which ranked as the least simp谩tico, they helped less than half the time. In Kolkata and Shanghai, people were three times as likely to help someone with an injured leg pick up fallen magazines as they were in Sofia or New York.

How do you explain this variation in friendliness? Culture plays a part: helpfulness is most common in Latin America, where social relationships are highly valued. But many of the friendliest cities turn out also to be the poorest and the least stable. Less surprisingly, people are more helpful where the pace of life is slower 鈥� though Vienna and Copenhagen (fast and helpful) and Kuala Lumpur (slow and unhelpful) buck this trend.

The best indicator of simp谩tico appears to be population density: in overcrowded cities people are less likely to come to your aid. This suggests environment has a greater influence than ethnicity or cultural background. A resident of Kuala Lumpur, New York, Singapore or Amsterdam 鈥� the four least friendly cities in Levine鈥檚 survey 鈥� is more likely to be kind to strangers in Rio than at home. This might be explained by the 鈥渟timulus overload鈥� theory proposed by social psychologist Stanley Milgram in the 1970s. He suggested that people living in overloaded environments cope by ignoring emergency situations and depersonalising strangers.

If you want to get away from all that, head for Rio, scene of the world鈥檚 biggest and most colourful carnival 鈥� surely no coincidence.