What Does "Finders Keepers"� Imply?

The full saying, "Finders keepers, losers weepers," is one that used to be very popular with children. It is intuitive, in that our first reaction to finding anything is to pick it up and, in most cases, to assume it's ours; all children react like this until taught otherwise. There is also an implication that if you don't look after your property, you don't deserve to have it restored to you.

Luckily we do mostly grow out of thinking like that, as can be seen from the number of things that get handed in at lost property offices. You might expect that the "finders keepers" mentality would prevail more strongly the poorer you were; but actually, in a piece of research conducted a few years ago, the opposite usually turned out to be true (those who handed in a "lost" wallet were mostly poorer than those who just pocketed it.) However, this may hold good only in relatively affluent societies.