You’re leaving the grocery store, and you have a choice—return the shopping cart or leave it in the parking lot. This simple decision is at the heart of the “Shopping Cart Test,” a thought experiment that speaks volumes about human behavior.
Returning the cart is easy, with no reward for doing it and no punishment if you don’t. But that’s the point. The Shopping Cart Test suggests that this small act reflects your sense of personal responsibility—doing the right thing simply because it’s right, not because you’re being watched.
In today’s world, the modern equivalent might be saying “please” and “thank you” when using AI. It’s a small gesture that reflects a bigger principle: how we treat tools and systems, even digital ones, can mirror our respect for others.
When I ask AI users about this, many say they do indeed say please and thank you, but often followed by the qualifier that they do it so they are treated nicely in the future when AI becomes our overlord!!
Adding please or thank you to your prompt WILL give you a different output. It has never been proved to be better or worse, but any change to the prompt you feed in will give you subtle differences to the content you get back.
By the way, I used this image about shopping carts (or shopping trolley where I grew up in England) because this is Sylvan Goldman, the original inventor back in 1976.
The shopping cart feels like one of those things that should have been around for longer than it has, although so does the proverbial ‘sliced bread’, which my Great Aunt Mollie was born before the invention of!
Dax
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