This study employed a longitudinal design involving 224 college students in Quanzhou City, Fujian Province, China, to examine the predictive relationship between subjective well-being (life satisfaction, positive emotions, negative emotions) and academic achievement (GPA earned). Data were collected through two questionnaire surveys (one yearapart). Results indicate that subjective well-being predicts academic achievement one yearlater. Specifically, life satisfaction and positive emotions exert significant predictive effects, while negative emotion shows no significant impact. Conversely, academic achievement didnot significantly predict subjective well-being one year later. The study confirms that happiness is a positive predictor of academic achievement, rather than academic achievement influencing happiness. However, the explained variance is small (2-4%), indicating that other factors play a more substantial role. Further analysis indicates that positive emotions exertlong-term effects on academic achievement by broadening cognitive and behavioral patterns and enhancing stress resilience. Life satisfaction indirectly promotes academic achievement by increasing learning engagement and autonomy. The study suggests that higher education should prioritize happiness education, enhancing student academic achievement through value transformation and well-being training. Limitations include regional sample concentration, uncontrolled socioeconomic variables, and the need for larger, more diverse samples in future research.
Wu et al. (2025) studied this question.