In 2006 Gallup surveyed people in 136 countries and asked the simple question: “Did you experience love for a lot of the day yesterday?” What researchers found is extremely fascinating. Surprisingly, the country whose population feels the most love isn’t the United States, or any country in the western hemisphere for that matter. According to the poll, 93% of Fillipinos felt loved “a lot” yesterday. Rwanda and Puerto Rico rounded out the top three – at 92% and 90% respectively. The United States came in at number 26 with 81% of Americans feeling the love. Our neighbors up north ranked 24th – I guess we’re not so different after all, eh?
Justin Wolfers, a senior scientist at Gallup and economist Bestey Stevenson have turned this data into a series of graphs and charts, an economics lesson on love if you will. They discovered that roughly 70% of the world feels love on a typical day. Washington Post columnist Max Fisher, created this map to put things into visual perspective:
In a separate poll, Gallup asked people in 150 countries a series of five questions including: “Did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday?” and “Were you treated with respect all day yesterday?” They then used the information collected to gauge which countries were the most and least emotional. Once again, the Philippines beat out the competition with a resounding 60%. The least emotional? Singapore. Only 36% of Singaporeans said they felt strong emotion the day before. Max Fisher, also lent his cartography skills to this poll:
Since we’re on the subject of emotions, I’m guessing your curious to see where the happiest place on earth is? According to Gfk Custom Research, it’s not Disneyland. They recently compiled a survey of 10,000 people in 29 countries and came to the conclusion that Rio De Janeiro, Sydney, and Barcelona were among the happiest cities in the world. The United States got in on the action by landing San Francisco in the number seven spot.
Too bad there isn’t a list for most loving organizations, because I’m pretty sure Invisible Children would easily top that list.
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