Measuring anguish

ENAR

Remember happiness? When the Positive Experience Index (PEI) of 138 countries was released last month by global opinion surveying organization Gallup, Executive noted how Syria’s war had wrecked havoc on its people’s positive emotions and sense of happiness. Now we have the pain test. In its just-released Negative Experience Index (NEI), Gallup measured the prevalence of negative emotions, and it shows a very clear and unenviable clustering of bad vibes in the Middle East and North Africa. According to the 2013 NEI, half of the ten most emotionally downtrodden countries — where people told surveyors they felt anger, stress, pain and worry the day prior — were in MENA. The rest of this unenviable top ten list was comprised of one country in each Asia and Africa, and three jurisdictions in Europe’s eastern Mediterranean. Iraq led the ranking on negative experiences, followed by Iran. Egypt and Greece were tied in third place,