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Emotional Wellbeing Indicator > Top Card > 2026-QTR 3 [UPDATE]
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Emotional Wellbeing

Key finding: In 2025, 38% of adults worldwide experienced a lot of worry the previous day, and 36% experienced stress. Physical pain (33%), sadness (26%) and anger (23%) were less common, but all five negative experiences remain higher than when Gallup began tracking them two decades ago. Despite higher levels of distress, positive experiences have changed little over the long term, except learning something interesting, which is up 10 percentage points in the past 20 years.

About this research: Gallup measures emotional wellbeing by asking people worldwide 10 questions about their daily emotional experiences. Responses form the Negative and Positive Experience Indexes of the Gallup World Poll. Tracking these emotional experiences over time, along with what drives them, gives leaders insights that reflect societal health and complement other objective indicators of human and economic development. Gallup has produced global statistics on emotions since 2006.

What We Measure
Definition

Emotional wellbeing is how people experience their daily lives through negative emotions and experiences, like worry and stress, and positive ones, like enjoyment and laughter. These experiences influence how people live, work and relate to one another.

Gallup’s Negative Experience Index for 2025 is 31. The Positive Experience Index for 2025 is 70.

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Definition

The Negative Experience Index is a measure of people’s daily negative experiences with physical pain, worry, stress, sadness and anger. Higher scores in this index indicate that negative experiences are more pervasive in a country. People's experiences with health problems and their ability to afford food are predictive of higher negative scores.

The Negative Experience Index reflects people's experiences worldwide, drawing on nearly two decades of Gallup World Poll data collected through nationally representative surveys.

The Negative Experience Index score is the mean of all valid affirmative responses to the applicable survey items multiplied by 100.

Because the questions are standardized across countries and tracked annually, the Negative Experience Index provides reliable global indicators of daily distress.

In 2025, 23% of adults globally said they experienced anger during a lot of the day yesterday.

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In 2025, 26% of adults globally said they experienced sadness during a lot of the day yesterday.

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In 2025, 36% of adults globally said they experienced stress during a lot of the day yesterday.

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In 2025, 38% of adults globally said they experienced worry during a lot of the day yesterday.

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In 2025, 33% of adults globally said they felt physical pain during a lot of the day yesterday.

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Definition

The Positive Experience Index is a measure of people’s daily positive experiences with rest, respect, laughter, learning and enjoyment. Higher scores in this index indicate that positive experiences are more pervasive in a country. These scores strongly relate to people's perceptions of their living standard, their personal freedoms and the presence of social networks.

The Positive Experience Index reflects people's experiences worldwide, drawing on nearly two decades of Gallup World Poll data collected through nationally representative surveys.

The Positive Experience Index score is the mean of all valid affirmative responses to the applicable survey items multiplied by 100.

Because this measure is consistent across 140 countries and areas each year, it allows for reliable comparisons of emotional wellbeing worldwide.

In 2025, 70% of adults globally said they experienced enjoyment during a lot of the day yesterday.

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In 2025, 71% of adults globally said they felt well-rested yesterday.

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In 2025, 54% of adults globally said they learned or did something interesting yesterday. This ties the previous record high set in 2023.

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In 2025, 72% of adults globally said they smiled or laughed a lot yesterday.

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In 2025, 83% of adults globally said they were treated with respect all day yesterday.

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Gallup’s Positive and Negative Experience Indexes

The latest global results are based on telephone and in-person interviews with nationally representative, probability-based samples among the adult population aged 15 and older, in 140 countries and areas in 2025.

For national adult samples in 2025, margins of sampling error range from ±2.2 to ±5.5 percentage points at the 95% confidence level and reflect the influence of data weighting. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

Related Content

Explore More Statistics on Emotions

Gallup publishes country-level data on global emotions and an annual State of the World’s Emotional Health report about negative and positive emotions and how they relate to life experiences.

View Country-Level Data

Explore the latest data on negative and positive emotions and experiences in 140 countries.

Explore Data

Read the State of the World's Emotional Health Report

Check out the latest in-depth report, released in partnership with the World Health Summit, on the relationship between social media and wellbeing, as well as emotional health in places experiencing prolonged crisis.

View Report

What Are More Insights on Global Wellbeing?

Gallup measure the attitudes, behaviors and wellbeing of people across more than 140 countries, representing over 98% of the global adult population. Check out this content for additional analyses about people’s emotional health and life evaluations.

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