Index of Ignorance: Thailand ranks as one of the most ignorant countries

Thailand has ranked 7th on the “Index of Ignorance,” a survey that compared people’s answers about their society with factual information.

Conducted by Ipsos MORI, a research company based in London, the survey asked 27,250 participants in 40 countries questions including: perceived happiness level, acceptance of homosexality, tolerance of abortion, what the Muslim population of their country is, and who might win in the 2016 U.S. election. Then, they looked at how accurate the respondents’ answers were when compared with facts.

According to their results, these are the top ten most “ignorant” countries:

1. India

2. China

3. Taiwan

4. South Africa

5. United States

6. Brazil

7. Thailand

8. Singapore

9. Turkey

10. Indonesia

On the other end of the chart, these are the least “ignorant” countries:

1. Netherlands

2. Great Britain

3. South Korea

4. Czech Republic

5. Malaysia

6. Australia

7. Germany

8. Italy

9. Norway

10. Sweden

Some of the interesting findings include the fact that Thai people are pessimistic about their happiness level. When asked what percentage of people in their country they think are happy, respondents guessed 51 percent, when the actual answer was that 98 percent of Thai people said they were happy.

When it comes to property, Thais underestimate the number of people who own the house they live in. Out of every 100 households, 70 of them are owned by the residents while Thais guessed only 51 percent of homes have the owner residing in them. However, nearly all countries massively underestimated the number of owned households.

The findings on Thailand about abortion and the acceptance of homosexuality were not presented in the chart.

Globally, most countries think that their population is much more Muslim than it actually is and all countries think that their population is less happy than they say they are.

Most countries are more tolerant of homosexuality, abortion and premarital sex than they think they are.

As the survey was conducted in the month of the U.S. elections, it asked the participants if they thought Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton would be elected. While most of the world predicted that Clinton would win, Russians had the most Trump-friendly results. In that country 50 percent of respondents thought that Trump would win.

Read more about the findings here.