A fun Honesty Study conducted by Honest Tea suggests that Marylanders are honest (when it comes to paying for tea on the honor system) about 89 percent of the time. How often are Marylanders honest? About 89 percent of the time, according to a fun Honesty Study by Bethesda-based Honest Tea, which set up self-serve kiosks of iced, Honest Tea across the nation earlier this summer. Signs by the kiosks asked passers-by to pay $1—on the honor system—for a bottle of tea, and 89 percent of Marylanders paid up, according to company tallies. Near Potomac, kiosks were set up on July 10 outside the Barnes & Noble bookstore at 4801 Bethesda Ave., Bethesda. Ninety-one percent of tea taken from those kiosks was paid for, according to Honest Tea. The other Maryland location was in Baltimore, where fewer tea-takers paid up, resulting in the state-wide average of 89 percent honesty (and a national ranking of 41st). The most honest tea-takers were in Alabama and Hawaii, where 100 percent of tea bottles were paid for, according to the National Honesty Index. The least honest tea-takers were in Washington, DC, where only 80 percent of tea bottles were paid for. We’ve conducted our experiment in different cities over the past few years, but this is the first time we’ve conducted the experiment on a national scale, Bethesda resident Seth Goldman—co-founder and TeaEO of Honest Tea—said in a statement.   Even though my bicycle was stolen the same day as our DC experiment, it’s reassuring to know that 92 percent of Americans will do the right thing even when it seems no one is watching, Goldman added. The study found that (of the participants), 95 percent of women were honest, and 91 percent of men were honest. (Gender results were the same in the company's 2012 honesty test.) Overall, 92 percent of tea-takers were honest. Ninety-five percent of blonde women and 94 percent of men with glasses were honest, according to study results, which broke the data down into a number of categories. The study also found that, among participants, 96 percent of people in groups were honest, while only 91 percent of people on their own were honest and paid for their tea. The complete National Honesty Index findings are available at www.NationalHonestyIndex.com. Honest Tea will donate all of the funds collected in the study to FoodCorps, a nationwide organization that helps provide children with nutritious food. Honest Tea was founded in 1998 in Bethesda and is the nation's top-selling organic bottled tea company specializing in beverages that are just a tad sweet, according to a company statement. Source: potomac.patch.com/groups/potomacs-rankings/p/honest-tea-experiment-reveals-how-honest-marylanders-are