Nope, it's not just you: The world around you really is getting angrier

The world is becoming an angrier place according to a recent study. Photo / 123RF

Many of us experience the world from inside bubbles that tend to get rather heated when they're exposed to the outside world - or to social media.

Twitter users, for instance, may wake up to @russianbot3526′s insults in the morning and go to bed after reading a blog post confirming their view that the world is going downhill.

Meanwhile, on Facebook, French President Macron's warning that Europe is returning to the 1930s could at any given moment be competing for attention with stories on the perhaps "world's worst famine in 100 years," a colony of 40,000 innocent penguins facing extinction in Antarctica and, well, Pamela Anderson storming out of a fundraiser, in protest against the world's focus on Notre Dame instead of other pressing issues that are threatening humanity.

Or maybe you are just reading about how your friends are preparing for the apocalypse (or Brexit) by stockpiling cans of tuna.

Sometimes, when the "happy mood" playlist you put on abruptly ends, that poses the question: Is it just me, or is the world around me really getting angrier?

Rest assured: It's not just you.

Last year, 22 per cent of respondents across 142 countries polled by Gallup globally said they felt angry, which was two percentage points higher than in 2017 and set a new record since the first such survey was conducted in 2006.

Globally, 39 per cent of respondents said they faced "a lot of worry" - up one percentage point - and 31 per cent even stated they "experienced a lot of physical pain." Stress levels, however, slightly dropped from 37 per cent two years ago to 35 per cent last year, which is why the world stayed at its record-high level on the "World Negative Experience Index," instead of getting even worse. The index is based on five measured negative emotions: anger, worry, sadness, stress and physical pain, with Chad being at the very bottom of the list and Taiwan having the least negative sentiments.

As it is almost always the case with global polls, there are some limitations of this survey, including different perceptions of emotions that may be due to cultural differences. Especially in developed nations, respondents may rate their situation to be bad, even though they would be considered lucky elsewhere.

Estonia, for instance, had some of the world's lowest negative experiences, whereas fellow Baltic nation Lithuania ranked at the very top of negative experiences, next to Yemen and Afghanistan. Lithuania is part of the European Union and has been in the headlines for its "remarkable recovery" after the financial crisis, rather than the devastating wars plaguing Afghanistan or Yemen. Those figures suggest that anger, sadness and worries are defined very differently around the world.

When the UN examined the Gallup polls for 2013, 2014 and 2015 about three years ago, they found that - regardless of those definitions - there were six key indicators that explained why some countries were happier than others. Per capita domestic product certainly played a role, but wealth was in some cases trumped by other factors, such as healthy years of life expectancy, freedom, trust in business and government, but also by things that are hard to measure and thus often ignored by politicians: generosity, for instance, and having someone who has your back in times of crisis.

That latter aspect - social support - was in fact among the three most important criteria, besides income and healthy life expectancy.

The fact that happiness and positive experiences aren't only tied to financial rewards has convinced some Western governments, including New Zealand, to launch programs to boost social support and well-being as part of government budgets.

Those initiatives still lag far behind the seemingly effortless happiness of parts of Latin America, according to the latest Gallup poll, where financial resources might be scarce -but so are negative sentiments, on average.

"Latin Americans may not always rate their lives the best (like the Nordic countries), but they laugh, smile and experience enjoyment like no one else in the world," wrote Jon Clifton, global managing partner at Gallup.

Of course, you wouldn't think so by scrolling your news feed and reading the comments beneath stories on the "migrant caravan," the "unique kind of financial crisis" that'll haunt Brazil or Peru's "health emergency".