This is according to a study published in the Social Science Journal. A social scientist at Texas Christian University tested this hypothesis by seeing how often loose change was stolen from his car at a car wash depending what else he left in the seat. A summary from NPR:
In a new paper titled “Getting Hosed,” Kinkade and fellow researchers Ronald Burns and Michael Bachmann at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth found that there were certain factors that increased the risk of theft.
At some carwashes, Kinkade dropped off the car with a copy of Maxim magazine inside it — the magazine contains plenty of suggestive pictures of semi-clad women. Underneath a seat, Kinkade also left crushed beer cans.
The idea, he said in an interview, was to suggest the driver of the car was somehow “deviant.”
Kinkade found that the cash was twice as likely to be stolen from when the magazine and beer cans were present. He also found that larger amounts of money were taken from the car, compared with when the magazine and beer cans were absent.
Kinkade did not confront the theives afterward saying that his study was not meant to be a sting operation.