From 2005 to 2006, researchers from the Gallup World Poll asked more than 125,000 people from 121 countries one question: Did you feel a great deal of stress yesterday? In remote regions the researchers even went door-to-door. The researchers computed an index of national stress. What percentage of a country's population said, yes, they felt stressed-out yesterday? Worldwide, the average was 33 percent. The United States came in high, at 43 percent. The Philippines took the top spot at 67 and Mauritania ranked last.

Then the researchers wondered: Does a nation's stress index correspond with other indexes of well-being, like happiness? To the researchers' surprise, the higher a nation's stress index, the higher the nation's well-being. A higher stress index also predicted higher scores on measures of happiness and satisfaction with life. More people reporting stress meant more people satisfied with their health, work, standard of living, and community. The researchers also observed that people living in countries with high levels of corruption, poverty, hunger, or violence, such as Mauritania, didn't always describe their days as stressful. And also surprisingly, the researchers found that the most unhappy people, people with high levels of shame and anger and low levels of joy, had "a notable lack of stress."

Researchers call this "the stress paradox." In other words, happy lives are not stress-free, nor does a stress-free life guarantee happiness. Even though most people view stress as harmful, higher levels of stress seem to go along with things we want: love, health, and satisfaction with our lives.