It’s not just you — the world really is getting more miserable.
People across the earth are sadder, angrier and more fearful than ever before, according to a major analysis of global well-being.
All three emotions rose to record levels in 2018 — for the second consecutive year — in Gallup’s annual Global State of Emotions report.
On the bright side, people reported a slight decline in stress, meaning that overall, the world remained exactly as miserable as it was in 2017. Unfortunately, that also was a record-breaking year for misery.
In the most recent 12 months dominated by war, political crises and humanitarian emergencies across the globe, Chad took the unwelcome honor of being the world’s most negative country.
It was followed by Niger, Sierra Leone and Iraq, while Latin American nations dominated on the positive side.
Gallup charted humanity’s prolonged slump by holding 151,000 interviews in 2018 with adults in more than 140 countries. It has measured emotions annually since 2006.
In 2018, about 4 in 10 people said they experienced a lot of worry the day before the interview, while a third said they were stressed and nearly 3 in 10 said they felt a lot of physical pain.
