Research suggests that a personal sense of autonomy supports individuals' success in a variety of domains, but information regarding these processes remains unclear. This paper attempts to establish a link between personal autonomy and cognitive processes, in the form of attributions for success and failure, in establishing a sense of subjective well-being, or happiness. One hundred and forty-one, primarily white (57%), college students (69% female) ranging in age from 17-27 ("M" = 18.8) responded to a series of questionnaires. Using bootstrapping analysis, autonomy was revealed to mediate attribution styles related to happiness, "CI" = 0.05-0.31; the reverse was also true, "CI" = 0.14-0.86, suggesting that these two processes are bidirectional. It may be that happiness relies, at least in part, on both a sense of control and a positive explanatory style for events in one's life.