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The survey, carried out by web hosting company 1&1 Internet, polled 5,000 consumers worldwide and found that Brits are less judgmental than the US, German, French and Spanish. Whereas 76 per cent of Americans and 74 per cent of Germans admitted to having judged someone based purely on their online material, just 46 per cent of Brits did the same.

And while 63 per cent of Britons don't believe it's possible to make a reliable overall impression of a

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person from their online material, 76 per cent of Americans think it is, as do 57 per cent of Spaniards.

However, Britain's necessity for personal interaction before making decisions upon people has its drawbacks, as Brits were shown to be the worst at making good friends online. Only one in 10 Brits managed to make three or more close friends online - for every other nation, around one in three were able to manage that.

As well as leading the ranks in term of open-mindedness, Brits are among the most forgiving too. 15 per cent of Spaniards and 13 per cent of Americans believed that a friend's personal online material could cause a rift between them, while just 6 per cent of Germans and 4 per cent of Britons and French believed the same.

"It appears that compared to other nations, Brits take personal online material with a pinch of salt," said Oliver Mauss, CEO at 1&1 Internet. "Whilst clearly engaged with the issue of their own online identity, Britons are impressively open-minded when it comes to seeing others online."