The world was beset by conflict in 2023 — as the war between
Ukraine and Russia dragged on and a new one broke out between
Israel and Hamas — but it was in a better place emotionally than it
was at the height of the pandemic. Negative emotions dipped for the
first time in a decade, and positive emotions rebounded to their
pre-pandemic highs.
The Gallup Global Emotions 2024 report offers a snapshot of
Gallup’s latest measurements of people’s positive and negative
daily experiences. The findings are based on nearly 146,000
interviews with adults in 142 countries and areas in 2023.
Gallup’s Positive and Negative Experience Indexes measure life’s
intangibles — feelings and emotions — that traditional economic
indicators such as GDP were never intended to capture. Each index
provides a real-time snapshot of people’s daily experiences,
offering leaders insights into the health of their societies that
they cannot gather from economic measures alone.
Negative Experience Index Slipped
On a global level, Gallup’s Negative Experience Index declined
for the first time since 2014. All five negative emotions that make
up the index fell between 2022 and 2023, with stress dropping the
most. Thirty-seven percent of adults worldwide felt stressed in
2023, down three percentage points from the previous year but well
above where it was a decade ago (33%) and the years before
that.
Guinea and Israel Led the World in Negative
Experiences
Afghanistan no longer scores the worst on the Negative
Experience Index. Guinea, which continues to grapple with
uncertainty after a military coup in 2021, scored the highest in
the world on the index in 2023, with a 53. Stress skyrocketed to
record levels in Guinea, rising 10 points between 2022 and
2023.
Israel, which Gallup surveyed two weeks after the Hamas attacks
on Oct. 7, earned a spot on this list for the first time with a
score of 47 — on par with Afghanistan and Liberia. In 2022, Israel
ranked among the countries with the lowest scores in the world on
this index.
Israel’s index score was inflated by record-level surges in
negative emotions in the aftermath of the attacks. Majorities of
Israelis experienced worry (67%), stress (62%) and sadness (51%) at
unprecedented levels. Over one in three Israelis (36%) said they
experienced a lot of anger — not a new high, but still the highest
percentage since 2013.
Positive Experience Index Rebound Complete
Further reinforcing that 2023 was a better year for the world’s
emotional health, positive experiences rebounded to their
pre-pandemic levels, completing the recovery that started in
2022.
People younger than 30 continued to be the most positive of all
age groups. Further, their positivity rebounded faster, with
emotions returning to pre-pandemic levels a year earlier than their
older peers. Most of the improvement on the index in 2023 took
place among those aged 30 and older.
The World Learned Something in 2023
For almost two decades, the percentage of people worldwide who
said they learned or did something interesting the previous day has
seldom topped 50%. The 54% who did so in 2023 represents a new
record high.
India, Iceland, Greece and China saw double-digit increases on
this measure in 2023.
More people in all age groups said they had these opportunities
in 2023 compared with the previous year, but people younger than 30
continued to be the most likely to say so (59%). Percentages among
older age groups also reached new highs (54% for those aged 30 to
49 and 50% for those aged 50 and older).
Afghanistan Slightly Less Bleak, but Still Least Positive in
the World
Positive Experience Index scores worldwide ranged from a high of
86 in Paraguay and Panama to a low of 38 in Afghanistan, which
posted the lowest score in the world, as it has almost every year
since 2017.
Afghanistan’s score on the index was slightly higher in 2023
than it was in either 2021 or 2022 after the Taliban’s takeover.
However, its score of 38 remains the lowest in the world, and most
Afghans are still living in misery. Gallup’s surveys showed Afghans
universally were still rating their lives so poorly that they were
considered suffering.
Much of the recent limited improvement in positive emotions has
occurred among Afghan men. In 2023, Afghan men scored a 42 on the
index, compared with 34 for Afghan women.
Afghanistan has ranked as the least positive country in the
world every year since 2017, apart from 2020, when Gallup could not
survey the country because of the pandemic. After dropping to a
record global low of 32 in 2021, scores have crept upward each
year, reaching 38 in 2023.
Over One in Five Adults Worldwide Felt Lonely
Given the substantial threat that loneliness and isolation pose
to people’s health and wellbeing, Gallup recently added loneliness
to the list of negative emotions that it asks the world about.
An analysis of the relationships between loneliness and other
emotions reveals that people who said they felt lonely were
substantially more likely than those who did not to experience the
five other negative emotions and were less likely to experience the
positive ones.
Gallup’s initial measure in 2023 showed that over one in five
adults worldwide (23%) reported feeling loneliness during a lot of
the previous day. However, experiences of loneliness ranged widely
around the world, from a high of 45% on the island nation of
Comoros to a low of 6% in Vietnam.
About Gallup
Gallup delivers analytics and advice to help leaders and
organizations solve their most pressing problems. Combining more
than 80 years of experience with its global reach, Gallup knows
more about the attitudes and behaviors of employees, customers,
students and citizens than any other organization in the world.
About the Gallup World Poll
The Gallup World Poll is the most comprehensive and
farthest-reaching survey of the world. The survey connects with
more than 99% of the world's adult population through annual,
nationally representative surveys with comparable metrics across
countries. The Gallup World Poll is used to measure and track
progress on several U.N. sustainable development goals and is the
official statistic for work and life for more than 55 indexes and
metrics associated with the most important aspects of individuals’
lives, their communities and their countries.
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khorshied_nusratty@gallup.com