Turkey and Lebanon are the least positive nations in the world, according to Gallup’s 2021 Global Emotions Report.
The 2021 Global Emotions report offers a snapshot of Gallup’s latest measurements of people’s positive and negative daily experiences amid a year like no other — the first full year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings are based on nearly 160,000 interviews with adults in 116 countries and areas in 2020 and early 2021.
According the survey’s results, Turkey shares the bottom of the Positive Experience Index with Lebanon with a score of 46, while El Salvador leads the index with a score of 82.
Positive Experience Index questions include: did you feel well-rested yesterday, were you treated with respect all day yesterday, did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday, did you learn or do something interesting yesterday and did you experience the following feelings during a lot of the day yesterday?
The Positive Experience Index score is the mean of all valid affirmative responses to these items, multiplied by country-level index scores ranging from zero to 100. Higher scores indicate that positive emotions are more pervasive in a country. These scores strongly relate to people’s perceptions about their living standards, personal freedoms and the presence of social networks.
The report attributed “Turkey’s journey to the bottom” to economic and political turmoil “that has carried a hefty price tag for both countries.”
“The majority of Lebanese people have not experienced enjoyment in their daily lives since 2018, and for Turks, this has been true since 2017,” the report said.
With regards to individual negative emotions, Turkey ranked second in terms of anger and fourth in terms of stress experienced by its citizens.
On the positive emotions side, Turkey performed poorly, rated at or near the bottom as it ranked second last in terms both of enjoyment and learning something, and ranked last in terms of smiling or laughing.