People in Bulgaria have been shown to be the most pessimistic in the world by a prominent psychological study by the University of Kansas and Gallup.

Despite perhaps the worst global economic recession since World War II, optimism generally precedes pessimism among people around the world, a study shows.

The University of Kansas and Gallup jointly presented their study in the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science in San Francisco on Sunday.

Gallup conducted a survey on some 150 000 adults in over 140 countries around the world, asking them how they envision their life to be in the next five years. Some 89% of respondents said that their life would be as good as or better than now in the next five years, while 95% believed their life would be better in the next five years than in the past five years.

Matthew Gallagher, lead researcher of the study at the University of Kansas, said, "These results provide compelling evidence that optimism is a universal phenomenon." Optimism was most greatly felt in Ireland, followed by Brazil, Denmark and New Zealand, and least felt in Zimbabwe, Egypt, Haiti and Bulgaria.

Based on responses, the researchers classified the participating countries into five categories -- very optimistic, optimistic, average, pessimistic and very pessimistic. The United States was in the "very optimistic" category, and Bulgaria was in the "very pessimistic" category with Afghanistan and Iraq. The researchers said demographic indicators such as age and household income did not have much effect on the level of optimism held by individuals.