The damaging myth of Israeli wartime ‘happiness’

When I tell Americans that Israel ranked fourth in happiness before the Gaza War and dropped only one rank to fifth after the war, their response is a perplexed, “Really?” Israelis respond similarly. The 2023 and 2024 World Happiness Reports (WHR) ranked Israel among the top five countries with the likes of Finland, Denmark, and Iceland, strange bedfellows indeed. This bewildering juxtaposition led many pundits to offer explanations about how Israel can be so resilient and happy despite the normal challenges, not to speak of the anguish of war.

In a recent but not isolated example, social psychologist Liraz Margalit asked “Why Israel’s happiness defies logic: The surprising truth behind a top-ten ranking.”. The problem with this account is that Israel’s “happiness” not only defies logic, it defies truth. These high rankings are not a “surprising truth” but a misconception based on the fuzzy concept of “happiness” used by the WHR. The sad truth is that although Israel does have a high quality of life satisfaction, we ranked much lower in emotional happiness before the war, and are seriously unhappy after only the first three months of war. Once more data is collected, the emotional unhappiness may plummet further.

Distinguishing life satisfaction from emotional happiness is critical, so let me explain.

The vague “happiness” encompasses two major components, both important. Life satisfaction is an overall evaluation of economic strength, social support, freedom, life expectancy, generosity, and corruption. The World Happiness Report measured this aspect of happiness with a single question that asked respondents to rate on a 10-point scale whether life in their country was the “worst (0) to best (10) possible life.” As the many pundits correctly noted, Israel’s strong sense of social support, generosity, and sense of meaning result in a high score in life satisfaction. But none of the factors that comprise the life satisfaction aspect of happiness include emotions, the other important and more conventionally understood meaning of happiness.

So, when Israelis say that their life is the “best,” they are focusing on the rich, meaningful life that leaves them satisfied or content. But what happens when we use the WHR’s data on positive feelings such as laughter, interest, and enjoyment, as well as negative feelings such as worry, fear, and anger? Happily, the reports did ask about these emotions but oddly did not consider them in the happiness rankings.

These emotion ratings provided a way to rank countries on emotional happiness, as opposed to life satisfaction. Since emotional happiness is a balance of high positive and low negative emotions, a combined score is the best way to compare differences in emotional state. For over 40 years psychology has used a positive ratio as a measure of the balance of positive and negative feelings. This ratio is the percentage of total emotions that are positive. For example, if a country has a positive emotion score of 7 and a negative score of 3, their total emotions are 10, so the positive ratio would be 70% (7/10 = 70%).

When these scores are used to rank countries on emotional happiness the results are dramatically different from life satisfaction ranking. Before the war, when Israel ranked 4th in life satisfaction, their positive emotion ratio was 72.6% which scientific studies show is a normal, but not optimal level. Their emotional happiness rank was 52nd, far below their satisfaction rank of 4th. Finland, number one in life satisfaction, had a positive ratio of 80%, which is optimal and their emotional happiness rank was 7th.

But it gets worse. After the first three months of the war, Israel dropped only 1 rank from 4th to 5th in life satisfaction. In contrast, the emotion happiness ratio dropped from 72.6% to 48% representing a staggering plunge of 85 ranks, from 52nd to 137th out of 138 countries. To appreciate this degree of emotional happiness, consider that Israel’s rank is sandwiched between two failed states: Lebanon at 136th and Afghanistan at 138th, perennial bottom crawlers.

Distinguishing between these two important aspects of “happiness,” life satisfaction and emotional happiness, provides a more understandable truth about Israeli happiness: As many pundits observed, the strong sense of purpose, social support, and resilience in dealing with adversity have helped Israel maintain a high level of life satisfaction, despite the trauma of war. This is not terribly surprising since the level of social support and sense of purpose may even increase in response to calamity.

The sad, unsurprising truth is that the nation’s emotional happiness has fallen from a pre-war normal (not optimal) level to a wartime low associated with clinically diagnosable anxiety, depression, and anger. This provides clarity for those perplexed about how we are supposed to be as emotionally happy as secure Scandinavians despite mourning fallen and wounded soldiers, sharing the nightmarish uncertainty about the hostages, and the anxious preparation for total war. Unlike Afghanistan and Lebanon, this precipitous drop in national mood will likely be temporary, but it should not be ignored.

The clear distinction between life satisfaction and emotional happiness is important for the many perplexed Israelis who continue to assert that life in Israel is still the most satisfying one, but who are not feeling emotionally very happy. The data indicate that you are not alone and that this temporary dip in mood is understandable. This more comprehensible analysis encourages those who are feeling down to acknowledge it, accept it as normal, and importantly, to seek appropriate help. Realistic coping is acquired not through denial and myths but by acknowledging a problem and getting help. Recognizing the truth of reduced emotional happiness is an important first step towards to rebounding back to our happier state of mind.