diff --git a/R/row_count.R b/R/row_count.R
index 93f1ebbca..0635688c8 100644
--- a/R/row_count.R
+++ b/R/row_count.R
@@ -52,7 +52,7 @@ row_count <- function(data,
                       select = NULL,
                       exclude = NULL,
                       count = NULL,
-                      allow_coercion = FALSE,
+                      allow_coercion = TRUE,
                       ignore_case = FALSE,
                       regex = FALSE,
                       verbose = TRUE) {
@@ -90,10 +90,10 @@ row_count <- function(data,
     rowSums(is.na(data))
   } else {
     # comparisons in R using == coerce values into a atomic vector, i.e.
-    # 2 == "2" is TRUE. If `allow_coercion = TRUE`, we only want 2 == 2 or
+    # 2 == "2" is TRUE. If `allow_coercion = FALSE`, we only want 2 == 2 or
     # "2" == "2". to achieve this, we simply compute the comparison on numeric
     # or non-numeric columns only
-    if (isTRUE(allow_coercion)) {
+    if (isFALSE(allow_coercion)) {
       numeric_columns <- vapply(data, is.numeric, TRUE)
       if (is.numeric(count)) {
         data <- data[numeric_columns]
diff --git a/man/row_count.Rd b/man/row_count.Rd
index cfcb051f1..8e66ba9bb 100644
--- a/man/row_count.Rd
+++ b/man/row_count.Rd
@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ row_count(
   select = NULL,
   exclude = NULL,
   count = NULL,
-  allow_coercion = FALSE,
+  allow_coercion = TRUE,
   ignore_case = FALSE,
   regex = FALSE,
   verbose = TRUE
diff --git a/tests/testthat/test-row_count.R b/tests/testthat/test-row_count.R
index 57c7e76ed..46125587b 100644
--- a/tests/testthat/test-row_count.R
+++ b/tests/testthat/test-row_count.R
@@ -34,7 +34,7 @@ test_that("row_count, allow_coercion match", {
     c4 = c(2, 3, 7, Inf),
     stringsAsFactors = FALSE
   )
-  expect_identical(row_count(d_mn, count = 2, allow_coercion = FALSE), c(1, 2, 0, 0))
-  expect_identical(row_count(d_mn, count = 2, allow_coercion = TRUE), c(1, 0, 0, 0))
-  expect_identical(row_count(d_mn, count = "2", allow_coercion = TRUE), c(0, 2, 0, 0))
+  expect_identical(row_count(d_mn, count = 2, allow_coercion = TRUE), c(1, 2, 0, 0))
+  expect_identical(row_count(d_mn, count = 2, allow_coercion = FALSE), c(1, 0, 0, 0))
+  expect_identical(row_count(d_mn, count = "2", allow_coercion = FALSE), c(0, 2, 0, 0))
 })