Middle East Leads World in Negative Emotions

Middle East Leads World in Negative Emotions

by Jon Clifton

Iraqis the most negative worldwide


Highest Negative Experience Index scores

Lowest Negative Experience Index scores

The Negative Experience Index is a measure of respondents' experienced wellbeing on the day before the survey, providing real-time measures of respondents' negative emotions and pain. The findings in this analysis are based on Gallup interviews in 148 countries in 2011.

Arab Spring Countries Most Negative, Former Soviet Countries Least Negative

Iraq's world-high score reflects a spike in negative emotions in 2011, with residents reporting near-record levels of sadness, stress, anger, physical pain, and worry. Situations were similar in Egypt. In fact, index scores in several of the Arab Spring countries where Gallup could conduct surveys placed them in the global top 10 of daily negative emotions. One notable exception is Yemen, where daily negativity declined from 37 in 2010 to 24 in 2011, after then-President Ali Abdullah Saleh left the country to get medical care in Saudi Arabia and ceded power to his vice president.

The U.S. was in the top quartile for daily negative emotions in 2011, scoring a 32 with increases in sadness, worry, and physical pain since 2007. This score puts the U.S. higher than many Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development member countries other than Hungary, Spain, Israel, Chile, Turkey, and Greece. Americans' negative emotions were at their lowest in 2007, with an index score of 23, the year before the economic downturn.

Negative Experience Index scores in OECD countries

The countries with the lowest reported negative emotions worldwide are all in Asia, with the exception of Mali (data were collected before the recent coup), Trinidad and Tobago, and the Somaliland region of Somalia. Additionally, five of the countries with the lowest Negative Experience Index scores are former Soviet Union countries, including Russia with a score of 16.

Not All Major Events Swing Moods

Major world events did not necessarily affect the daily negative emotions in some countries. Japan's score of 21 on the index was exactly the same three months after the massive earthquake in 2011 as it was the year before. The trend was similar in earthquake-ravaged Haiti, where the level of negative emotions did not change between December 2008 and June 2010. However, Haiti saw a six-point decline in negative emotions between 2011 and 2010, as reported stress, anger, sadness, and worry dropped. The timing of these surveys might also play an important factor. Negative emotions might have increased immediately following the earthquakes, but the increases may not have lasted.

Bottom Line

Countries and territories with the highest negative emotions have been struck with economic hardship, riots, and revolutions. In some cases, such as Egypt and Bahrain, negative emotions were running high well before the unrest.

Previous Gallup research suggests that rising income and GDP at the country level do not always suggest a rise in wellbeing. As new governments emerge from revolutions and other governments implement extreme austerity measures, leaders need to track daily emotions and wellbeing in general as both will give a more complete picture of stability than GDP and income.


Survey Methods


The Negative Experience Index is an aggregation of five questions:




Negative Experience Index scores worldwide

Gallup http://www.gallup.com/poll/155045/Middle-East-Leads-World-Negative-Emotions.aspx
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