Washington, May 25 (IANS) People of Denmark, Brazil, Ireland and New Zealand have the brightest outlook on earth while those of Zimbabwe, Egypt, Haiti and Bulgaria are the least optimistic, says a new study. Americans figure 10th on the list of optimistic people.
The University of Kansas study, based on data from Gallup World Poll, said human beings are optimistic by nature and neither economic recession, wars, famine nor flu epidemics can dent it.
More than 150,000 adults from over 140 countries provided a representative sample of 95 percent of the world's population.
Eighty-nine percent of the global population expect the next five years to be as good or better than their current life, and 95 percent of individuals expected their life in five years to be as good or better than their life was five years ago.
'These results provide compelling evidence that optimism is a universal phenomenon,' said Matthew Gallagher, psychology doctoral candidate at the University of Kansas, who led the study.
Demographic factors (age and household income) appear to have only modest effects on individual levels of optimism, said a Kansas university release.
The study was presented Sunday at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science in San Francisco.
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