Singapore, a Nation Without Feeling

Posted on Nov 22, 2012

Ghobind Khalsa (CC BY-ND 2.0)

Singaporeans on public transit, looking not unlike New Yorkers.

Despite temperate weather, low unemployment and high per-capita GDP, a new Gallup poll marks Singapore as the least outwardly emotional country in the world, beating what some regard as the traditionally humorless nations of Eastern Europe.

Pollsters asked respondents from more than 150 countries whether they felt “well rested,” if they were “treated with respect” and whether they “smile or laugh a lot.” The results showed Singaporeans were the least likely to report experiencing any emotions at all.

Only 36 percent of Singaporeans said they felt positive or negative emotions on a daily basis, compared with 60 percent of Filipinos (the highest rate worldwide) who reported regularly feeling both.

At 46.6 hours a week, Singapore’s 5.2 million residents work the longest hours in the world.

Analysts pointed out that high emotionality does not necessarily equate with happiness. The highly emotional Philippines ranked 103rd out of 155 countries in the 2012 World Happiness Report.

—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

The Guardian:

“If you measure Singapore by the traditional indicators, they look like one of the best-run countries in the world,” Gallup’s Jon Clifton was quoted as saying in a Bloomberg report on the survey. “But if you look at everything that makes life worth living, they’re not doing so well.”

… While many Singaporeans seem to agree that the nation does indeed work excessively long hours, its population is not necessarily “emotionless”, said the Singaporean native Adrianna Tan. “Every culture expresses everything differently. [The] European love of siesta, or quality of life, is seen in Asian eyes to be laziness,” said the 27-year-old IT consultant. “You can’t put one set of expectations that one group of people decides is ‘how one should live’ and apply it uniformly across the world.”

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