The ten lowest ranking countries are joined by Slovakia, and my native country, Belgium, is not doing much better.

Why do I trust this study?

Because Serbia ranks number one, and I’ve been in Serbia. Man, the people there are direct, sort of confrontational, upfront, the women are so self-confident that they’ll make you weak in the knees, and it’s the only country I’ve ever been to with taxi drivers who will bark back at you if you say anything at all hat they don’t like. (Why didn’t I move there? Could use a self-confidence boost…)

Nope, I’m in Slovakia, where real, not just the posing kind of self-confidence, is rare.

But the only country that has a truly significantly lower score than all the rest is…

Nippon.

That’s the Japanese name for… Japan.

Chile comes in second which fits with my own observations, we have an interview with a guy from Chile here. The Netherlands scores better than Belgium, which fits with my own impression and our own cliches about the differences between Flemish and Dutch people. What strikes me as a bit off, is that Slovakia scores better than the Czech Republic, usually people around here think that Czechs are more self-confident than Slovakians, but maybe it’s just an act. Or this study has a margin of error.

You can check out the details of the study here.

Thanks to Erik Mut for bringing this to our attention.

This is the list of the countries that participated in the study with their test scores.

  • Serbia: 33.59
  • Chile: 33.12
  • Israel: 33.03
  • Peru: 33.01
  • Estonia: 32.63
  • United States: 32.21
  • Turkey: 32.14
  • Mexico: 32.04
  • Croatia: 31.94
  • Austria: 31.78
  • Finland: 31.76
  • Slovenia: 31.74
  • Germany: 31.73
  • Netherlands: 31.60
  • Spain: 31.52
  • Portugal: 31.30
  • Greece: 31.29
  • Congo: 31.28
  • Argentina: 31.24
  • Bolivia: 31.24
  • Cyprus: 31.17
  • Australia: 31.07
  • Botswana: 30.85
  • Zimbabwe: 30.77
  • Italy: 30.56
  • U.K.: 30.55
  • Lebanon: 30.52
  • India: 30.44
  • Brazil: 30.34
  • Poland: 30.34
  • New Zealand: 30.24
  • Canada: 30.22
  • Philippines: 29.98
  • Indonesia: 29.88
  • Latvia: 29.88
  • France: 29.86
  • Malaysia: 29.83
  • Belgium: 29.66
  • Lithuania: 29.60
  • Romania: 29.54
  • Malta: 29.53
  • Tanzania: 29.52
  • Ethiopia: 29.24
  • South Korea: 29.17
  • Switzerland: 29.16
  • Morocco: 29.13
  • Slovakia: 28.94
  • Fiji: 28.91
  • Taiwan: 28.77
  • Czech Republic: 28.47
  • Bangladesh: 27.80
  • Hong Kong: 27.54
  • Japan: 25.50