Abstract
In cross-sectional research, subjective well-being and grit are found to be positively correlated. Their mutually reinforcing effects are particularly relevant for youth entering early adolescence because, during this developmental period, both well-being and grit have been shown to predict consequential outcomes later in life. However, their mutual relation has not yet been investigated in early adolescence. This study, therefore, examined the possibility of a virtuous cycle linking subjective well-being and grit during early adolescence. Self-report questionnaires of grit and subjective well-being were completed by N = 5291 children in China (47.6% girls; initial Mage = 9.69, SDage = 0.59) on six occasions over 3 academic years. In random-intercept cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPMs), within-person changes in grit predicted within-person changes in subjective well-being 6 months later, and vice versa. Notably, analyses revealed an asymmetry in this cycle: paths from subjective well-being to grit were stronger and more reliable than the converse. Likewise, facet-level analyses showed that the predictive power of the perseverance component (of grit) and the affective component (of subjective well-being), respectively, was greater than the passion and cognitive components, respectively. These findings highlight the potential of boosting happiness for catalyzing positive youth development and, in addition, foreground the utility of studying these composite constructs at the facet level.
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Notes
Only seven studies (8%) among the 83 studies in the meta-analysis had time lags between measuring grit and subjective well-being (Hou et al., 2022). Several studies have reported substantial correlations between grit and subsequent subjective well-being facets or correlates (e.g., job satisfaction, depression) with intervals up to 3 years (Chandra et al., 2020; Jordan et al., 2018; Kleiman et al., 2013; O’Sullivan et al., 2019). However, these studies were not designed to test the relation between grit and subjective well-being and lacked control over potential causal variables. Only two short-term longitudinal studies were designed to directly examine whether grit has prospective effects on subjective well-being (Datu et al., 2021; Jiang et al., 2020). Using a daily diary design tracking grit and subjective well-being for 21 consecutive days, Jiang et al. (2020) found that daily grit promoted daily subjective well-being. The other study found that the perseverance facet of grit predicted life satisfaction 2 months later (Datu et al., 2021).
Subsets of the data have been used in prior work (Zhang et al., 2022); however, the research hypotheses, reported analyses, and conclusions made in this article do not overlap with those of other papers.
Specifically, 4318 students from Hebei, and 973 students from Beijing. Data collection location was dummy coded and used as a moderator. No significant moderation effect was found in the main analyses, so the two samples were combined together.
Specifically, parental education levels of Hebei students were collected from school records and those of Beijing students from parent surveys.
The within-person level includes measurement error as well as reliable within-person variance across time (Wilms et al., 2020).
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Acknowledgements
We thank the adolescents, teachers, and parents who gave their time to this study. We are also thankful to the research assistants and lab members who helped carry this research out.
Funding
This work was supported by the Major Projects of National Social Science Fund of China [project number 16ZDA229].
Data Sharing DeclarationThe datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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T.Z. conceived of the study, participated in its design, measurement, and coordination, performed the statistical analysis, and drafted the manuscript; D.P. conceived of the study, participated in its design, coordination, and interpretation of the data, and drafted the manuscript; E.T. participated in the design of the study, supervised the statistical analysis, and helped to draft the manuscript; A.L.D. participated in the design of the study and interpretation of the data, and drafted the manuscript; L.L. participated in the design of the study, supervised its measurement and helped to draft the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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The authors declare no competing interests.
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All procedures performed in the present study were in accordance with the recommendations of the Research Ethics Committee of the Beijing Normal University and with the Declaration of Helsinki.
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Written informed consent was obtained from the involved schools and parents of the participating youth.
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Zhang, T., Park, D., Tsukayama, E. et al. Sparking Virtuous Cycles: A Longitudinal Study of Subjective Well-Being and Grit During Early Adolescence. J. Youth Adolescence 53, 331–342 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-023-01862-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-023-01862-y