Countries where people are more in touch with their emotions

Click to enlarge. Data source: Gallup (Max Fisher/Washington Post)

People in yellow countries are the least likely to report having emotional experiences of any kind, positive or negative. Purple countries are where people report experiencing the most feelings. If you’re surprised to see that the United States is among the world’s most emotional countries (but far from No. 1) or want to learn why some regions are so unemotional, you can read all about it here.

A color-coded map of the world’s most and least emotional countries

By Max Fisher, Published: November 28, 2012 at 7:30 amE-mail the writer

A map of the world’s countries by most and least emotional. Click to enlarge. (Max Fisher)

Since 2009, the Gallup polling firm has surveyed people in 150 countries and territories on, among other things, their daily emotional experience. Their survey asks five questions, meant to gauge whether the respondent felt significant positive or negative emotions the day prior to the survey. The more times that people answer “yes” to questions such as “Did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday?”, the more emotional they’re deemed to be.

Gallup has tallied up the average “yes” responses from respondents in almost every country on Earth. The results, which I’ve mapped out above, are as fascinating as they are indecipherable. The color-coded key in the map indicates the average percentage of people who answered “yes.” Dark purple countries are the most emotional, yellow the least. Here are a few takeaways.

Singapore is the least emotional country in the world. ”Singaporeans recognize they have a problem,” Bloomberg Businessweek writes of the country’s “emotional deficit,” citing a culture in which schools “discourage students from thinking of themselves as individuals.” They also point to low work satisfaction, competitiveness, and the urban experience: “Staying emotionally neutral could be a way of coping with the stress of urban life in a place where 82 percent of the population lives in government-built housing.” 

The Philippines is the world’s most emotional country. It’s not even close; the heavily Catholic, Southeast Asian nation, a former colony of Spain and the U.S., scores well above second-ranked El Salvador. 

Post-Soviet countries are consistently among the most stoic.Other than Singapore (and, for some reason, Madagascar and Nepal), the least emotional countries in the world are all former members of the Soviet Union. They are also the greatest consumers ofcigarettes and alcohol. This could be what you call and chicken-or-egg problem: if the two trends are related, which one came first? Europe appears almost like a gradient here, with emotions increasing as you move West. 

People in the Americas are just exuberant. Every nation on the North and South American continents ranked highly on the survey. Americans and Canadians are both among the 15 most emotional countries in the world, as well as ten Latin countries. The only non-American countries in the top 15, other than the Philippines, are the Arab nations of Oman and Bahrain, both of which rank very highly.

English- and Spanish-speaking societies tend to be highly emotional and happy. Though the Anglophone nations of the world retain deep cultural links, it’s not clear if Spain’s emotional depth has anything to do with Latin America’s. According to Gallup, “Latin America leads the world when it comes to positive emotions, with Panama, Paraguay, and Venezuela at the top of that list.” Yes, even Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela is apparently filled with happy people.

Africans are generally stoic, with some significant exceptions. The continent is among the world’s least emotional, though there is wide variation, which serves as a non-definitive but interesting reminder of Africa’s cultural diversity. Each could be its own captivating case study. It’s possible that South Africa’s high rating has to do with its cultural ties to Western Europe, for example, and Nigeria’s may have to do with the recent protest movement in the south and sectarian violence in the north. 

The Middle East is not happy. Gallup notes, “Negative emotions are highest in the Middle East and North Africa, with Iraq, Bahrain, and the Palestinian Territories leading the world in negative daily experiences.” Still, that doesn’t quite fully explain the high emotions in the Levant and on the Arabian peninsula, compared to the lower emotions in Libya, Algeria, and Morocco. Perhaps this hints at how people in these countries are being affected by the still-ongoing political turmoil of the Arab Spring. 

What am I missing? Every color-coded national boundary here tells a story. Why is Haiti so bereft of emotion compared to its neighbors? Why is Angola so heavy with feeling? Leave your thoughts in the comments or reach me on social media.

end quote from:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/11/28/a-color-coded-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-emotional-countries/

I wanted to write a comment sooner but the graphics prevented me from doing this in the quotes. 

When I titled this "Countries where people are in touch with their emotions" I did this consciously. Because "being more emotional" can mean being "out of control" or it can also mean "People who are in touch with their emotions and therefor function better overall".

IN the U.S. I can safely say that it means "being in touch with what you are feeling" but also mostly it means "being in touch with your emotions while being in control" more than most countries on earth.

In the U.S. we are a paradox in that we are self disciplined like the English and Canadians and yet we are more emotive also than either the English or the Canadians. Right now I would say the Canadians have many advantages over Americans because of low population and a lot of natural resources compared to the area of our respective countries. But, in the main up until now being the paradox that Americans were both in being self disciplined and emotive has been to our advantage. Whether it stays to our advantage now we are beginning to become overpopulated more is anyone's guess.

Here is the population around the time I was born:

Jul 1, 1950

152.27 million

Here is the population in 2012

Nov 1, 2012	314.69 million

As you can plainly see it has more than doubled since 1950. So, for me, the U.S. is now overpopulated. However, someone coming to the U.S.  from another country like China or India might have

an entirely different experience.

And I would hazard a guess that our present overpopulation is one of the biggest problems of the 25% poorest people in the U.S. finding jobs. IN other words overpopulation causes not enough jobs to go around. If you study average unemployment rates from 1950 until the present I think you will agree with me.

Here are the average unemployment rates of the whole U.S. for the 1950s

1950, 5.3. 1951, 3.3. 1952, 3.0. 1953, 2.9. 1954, 5.5. 1955, 4.4. 1956, 4.1. 1957, 4.3. 1958, 6.8

When was the last time you saw an average unemployment rate of 2.9% for a whole year?

The above quote was from:

2. Unemployment Rate - Bureau of Labor Statistics Data

   data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNU04000000?years_option...Annual...‎

   Year, Annual. 1947, 3.9. 1948, 3.8. 1949, 5.9. 1950, 5.3. 1951, 3.3. 1952, 3.0. 1953, 2.9. 1954, 5.5. 1955, 4.4. 1956, 4.1. 1957, 4.3. 1958, 6.8. 1959, 5.5.

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