What the data actually shows
The key body of work is Jeanne Tsai's research on 'ideal affect' — the emotional states people most want to feel, as distinct from the ones they actually feel. Tsai and colleagues found systematic cultural differences: people in many Western, especially American, contexts tend to value high-arousal positive states like excitement and enthusiasm more, while people in many East Asian contexts tend to value low-arousal positive states like calm and contentment more.
Crucially, the research frames these as different ideals rather than different amounts of happiness. Neither high-arousal nor low-arousal positive affect is presented as superior; they are different culturally-shaped preferences for what 'feeling good' should be like. This shows up in everyday things — the emotions depicted in media, the smiles people prefer, even how products are marketed across cultures.
The wellbeing implication centres on the gap between ideal and actual affect. Tsai's work suggests that a mismatch — valuing excitement but mostly feeling calm, or valuing calm but mostly feeling keyed-up — is associated with lower wellbeing. As with most of this field, these are correlational, culturally-situated findings from self-report, so they describe reliable patterns rather than fixed laws.
Why this feels different from how it actually is
It feels like one of these must be the right kind of happiness because the culture around you quietly broadcasts an answer. In many Western settings the marketed image of happiness is high-energy — thrilled, enthusiastic, pumped — so calm contentment can feel like settling, even when it suits you. The 'should' is so ambient that it reads as a universal fact rather than a cultural preference.
The ideal also tends to be invisible as an ideal. We experience our preferred kind of happiness as simply what happiness is, not as one option among several, so a mismatch registers as 'something is wrong with me' rather than 'my actual state and my ideal don't line up.' Tsai's research is useful precisely because it names the ideal as a separate, learned thing.
And mismatch is easy to misdiagnose. Someone who values excitement but lives a calm life may conclude they need a bigger life; someone who values calm but lives a charged one may conclude they need to relax harder. Both are reading the gap as a deficit in the actual state, when the evidence suggests the gap itself — not either state alone — is much of the problem.
The data does not crown a winner; the trouble starts when there is a gap between the happiness you think you should feel and the one you actually feel.
What the research says to do about it
The most defensible step is to notice the gap between the happiness you actually feel and the kind you treat as ideal, and to question where the ideal came from. Recognising that 'happiness should feel exciting' (or 'happiness should feel calm') may be a culturally absorbed preference rather than a fact makes it easier to stop chasing a state that does not fit you.
From there, alignment can go either way: shifting your activities toward the affect you value, or — often more sustainable — loosening an ideal that is causing the mismatch. If you genuinely value calm, building a life that produces calm tends to beat manufacturing excitement; if you value excitement, the reverse. The point is to match the pursuit to the ideal you actually hold, not the one you assume you should.
Because both states are legitimate, it is also reasonable to want a mix and to let your ideal shift across contexts and life stages. The effects in this research are real but moderate and culturally contingent, so treat this as guidance for reducing a specific avoidable friction, not as a formula for happiness.
What the research says does not help
Assuming one kind of happiness is objectively superior is the core mistake. The research does not support ranking excitement above contentment or vice versa; importing someone else's ideal — or your culture's default — and treating it as the universal target tends to manufacture the very mismatch that lowers wellbeing.
Trying to force a state you do not actually value rarely sticks. Chasing high-arousal excitement when you genuinely prefer calm (or grimly pursuing serenity when you are wired for enthusiasm) works against your own ideal and tends to feel hollow, because the problem was never the amount of effort.
Reading the ideal-actual gap as a personal defect is both common and unhelpful. The dissatisfaction usually points to a misalignment between what you value and what you live, not to something broken in you — so self-criticism aimed at 'not being happy the right way' addresses a problem that, on this evidence, does not exist.
We experience our preferred kind of happiness as simply what happiness is, not as one option among several.
What this looks like in real life
Valuing excitement, living a calm life
Someone who treats 'real' happiness as high-energy — thrilled, enthusiastic, pumped — but whose days are mostly quiet and steady can read that quiet as settling. On this research, the trouble isn't the calm itself; it's the gap between the calm they live and the excitement they've absorbed as the ideal. The misread conclusion 'I need a bigger life' addresses the state rather than the mismatch.
Valuing calm, living a charged one
The reverse case: someone wired to prize serenity who lives a keyed-up, high-stimulation life may decide they just need to 'relax harder.' Tsai's framing suggests the friction is the gap between an ideal of calm and an actual state of arousal — which is why loosening or realigning the ideal often does more than grimly manufacturing either state.
Real numbers in context
There are no clean headline figures here, and that is part of the point: this is research about kinds of happiness, not amounts, so it resists single numbers. The reliable findings are directional — Tsai's work shows consistent cultural differences in ideal affect (more value placed on high-arousal states in many Western contexts, on low-arousal states in many East Asian contexts) and links the ideal-versus-actual gap to lower wellbeing.
It helps to hold this in honest proportion. These are correlational, culturally-situated patterns from self-report, describing tendencies rather than rules, and individual variation within any culture is large. The practical value is the reframe — that mismatch, not the choice between excitement and calm, is the avoidable problem — rather than any precise statistic about which state is best.