Ipsos Global Trustworthiness Index 2026
Trust across professions
Doctors are considered the most trustworthy profession with 58% on average across saying they find them trustworthy. Scientists (57%) and teachers (53%) are the second and third most trusted professions.
When it comes to trust, there is more that unites people across countries than divides. In all but four countries, doctors, scientists and teachers are the three most trusted professions.
When it comes to who people find the most untrustworthy there is greater variety. On average across 31 countries politicians (13%), social media influencers (14%) and advertising executives (15%) are the least trusted. In Indonesia and South Africa, the police are viewed as one of the most untrustworthy, while in Hungary and Singapore, bankers make it into the top three.
For the first time this year we asked people whether they trusted AI chatbots. Only 23% find them trustworthy while 40% think they are not to be trusted. In nine countries do a majority find them untrustworthy. These countries are all English-speaking or in Europe, highlighting that scepticism towards AI is greatest among these countries. This is something we also see in our annual Ipsos AI Monitor.
Also new this year is the bosses of those AI companies and other leaders within the tech industry. Tech entrepreneurs on average are more likely to be trusted than not (31% to 25%). They rank ninth out of 22 professions when it comes to trust and are more likely to be seen as trustworthy than business leaders in general (24%). However, when we look at the country where many of the most well-known tech entrepreneurs are based, we see a story different to the global average. In the United States, only 22% think they are trustworthy while 38% find them untrustworthy.
The Ipsos Global Trustworthiness Country Index
To try and understand how trust varies across countries, Ipsos created the Global Trustworthiness Country Index. This is worked out by subtracting a country’s untrustworthy scores across professions from their trustworthy score.
On average, we see countries in Asia Pacific are more likely to have higher trust scores. India is the most trusting country with Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia rounding out the top five across 31 countries. New Zealand ranks eighth.
In Europe, countries in the northern part of the continent – the Netherlands and Sweden - are more trusting. While countries in Eastern Europe are the least trusting – Poland and Romania finish bottom on our list of 31 countries. All LATAM countries in our survey have negative trust scores.
However, this is not to say these countries don’t trust the average person in their country. All LATAM countries are more likely to say they trust the average man/woman in their country than distrust.
Across 31 countries twice as many people think the ordinary person is trustworthy (34%) compared to those who say they are not (18%). Türkiye, Hungary and Japan are the only countries that are more likely to find the average citizen untrustworthy than trustworthy.
