Is America a More Ignorant Country Than Israel?
Image by Julian Finney / Getty Images
A week ago, Ipsos MORI, a market research company based in London, released their 2016 Index of Ignorance, which purportedly measures the level of ignorance in 40 countries from around the world. Ipsos MORI gathered their data from a survey taken by 27,250 people – between 500 and 1000 in each of the countries tested.
The survey, titled “Perils of Perception,” measures respondents’ accuracy when estimating figures like the relative size of the Muslim population in their country, or the number of people in their country who believe that homosexuality is unacceptable. The answers to the various questions and their accuracy relative to Ipsos MORI’s official data were combined to create the Index.
The United States placed in the top-5 most ignorant countries, with India being the most ignorant. Israel place 18th, right in the middle of the pack. The Netherlands placed lowest on the Index earning them the title of least ignorant country.
To what extent a population’s relative guessing skills actually measure anything like ignorance is open for debate (consider me a skeptic), but, in any event here are the full results from most ignorant to least:
- India
- China
- Taiwan
- South Africa
- USA
- Brazil
- Thailand
- Singapore
- Turkey
- Indonesia
- Mexico
- Canada
- Montenegro
- Russia
- Serbia
- Philippines
- Hong Kong
- Israel
- Denmark
- Argentina
- France
- Vietnam
- Peru
- Spain
- Chile
- Hungary
- Japan
- Belgium
- Poland
- Colombia
- Sweden
- Norway
- Italy
- Germany
- Australia
- Malaysia
- Czech Republic
- South Korea
- United Kingdom
- Netherlands
Jake Romm is the Forward’s culture intern. Contact him at [email protected] or on Twitter, @JakeRomm
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