KUALA LUMPUR: The Gallup Global Emotions 2024 report which offers a snapshot of its latest measurements of people’s positive and negative daily experiences, has ranked Malaysia among the countries in the world with the lowest negative experiences.
Malaysia was the second lowest, tied with Mongolia and Uzbekistan with an index score of 19, while Estonia, Kosovo and Russia led the pack, scoring 20 in the negative experience index.
Gallup’s Positive and Negative Experience Indexes measure life’s intangibles, feelings and emotions, which indicate how pervasive positive and negative emotions are in each country, whereby the findings in the report are based on nearly 146,000 interviews with adults in 142 countries and areas in 2023.
The 2023 findings reveal that Southeast Asia’s representation on the Positive Experience Index is strong, with several countries reporting some of the highest positive experiences worldwide, according to Gallup in a statement.
Nine in 10 adults in Indonesia (90%) said they smiled or laughed a lot the day before the survey. In the Philippines, 75% of adults learned or did something interesting, well above the global average of 54%, while Vietnam (92%) and Malaysia (90%) led the world in feeling well-rested.
While the Latin American countries of Panama and Paraguay had the highest scores globally at 86, Indonesia was close behind with an index score of 84, and Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand all recorded scores of 82.
The report also explores the prevalence of negative emotions worldwide. On a global level, negative emotions declined for the first time since 2014 with scores ranging from a high of 53 in Guinea to a low of 11 in Vietnam, which appeared at the bottom of this list for the second time.
Thailand and the Philippines both reported high positive experiences, with index scores of 82, but neither country had low negative experiences, reporting scores of 26 and 35, respectively.
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, and reported loneliness varied across Southeast Asia, from a high of 33% in the Philippines to a low of six per cent in Vietnam.
