【The Never Ending Love Story】

Most of us probably assume that if we were attacked by a dog or The Never Ending Love Storyheld at gunpoint the people who love us would attempt a heroic rescue out of the goodness of their hearts. Think again.

A new survey found that while the large majority of people said they’d risk their life to rescue a loved one with no reward involved, a shocking seven percent of husbands said they’d require cash to risk their life to save their wife if she was being held at gunpoint. Do you hear that? That's the sound of every woman in the world running to pose this question to their partner.

This unsettling data was commissioned by LatestCasinoBonuses.com, an online casino forum, in order to gain some insight into how rewards factor into making split-second decisions. The 2,000 survey respondents were faced with various bad situations, like a dog attack, drowning, oncoming traffic or being held at gunpoint.

They were then asked whether they would risk their own life to save different people in that situation only for a cash reward (they could name the minimum they'd need, between 25,000 and 100 million dollars), without any cash on offer, or whether they wouldn’t risk themselves to save the person at all.

Before the wives in the crowd get too high and mighty, six percent of women said they'd only save their husbands from gunpoint for cash. Yikes. When it came to drowning, five percent of men and three percent of women said they'd need cash to save their spouse. The figures were roughly the same for saving a partner from oncoming traffic.

Horrifyingly, the same logic applies to people's own children. The overwhelming majority (95 percent) said they’d save their kid from a dog attack, drowning, or oncoming traffic, without expecting a reward. But four percent of people said they wouldn’t risk their own neck to save their child without being given cash, and one percent said they wouldn’t risk their life at all. That is deeply, deeply messed up.

When it comes to saving strangers, people were a lot less selfless. When asked about rescuing someone else's kid from a dog attack, 19 percent of people said they would require cash. (Those numbers were similar for drowning and oncoming traffic.) So basically never depend on the kindness of strangers. Ugh.

It's worth taking these results with a grain of salt -- since this isn't a peer-reviewed study. And it’s admittedly an odd construct because it’s not like life is a game show where a host pops into an unfolding crisis and says, “Sir, are you willing to save your wife? What about if I give you $50,000 right now?” So there's a reasonable chance your miserly spouse or parent might leap to your rescue even if a cash bonus isn't in the offing.

Still, the results are thought-provoking, and it might be worth reconsidering your relationship if you think your beloved would demand a heap of money before heading into traffic to save you.