Leadership, Management & Life in the Workplace
  • Blog
  • About John
  • Decoding the Workplace
  • Dr. Juran AIG Archival Project
  • Contact
  • Disclaimers

Passion: Something to Find or Something to Develop

11/18/2018

2 Comments

 
Picture
What does it mean to “find your passion?” A Google search using that phrase in quotation marks yields over 9 million results. “Find your passion” is advice you have probably heard, read, or given. But what does it mean? More important, what do you believe about finding your passion? Do you think interests are innate just waiting to be discovered (fixed)? Or do you think strong interests grow and develop (growth)? 
 
In a 2018 study in Psychological Science, Paul O’Keefe (Yale-NUS), Carol Dweck (Stanford), and Gregory Walton (Stanford) discussed these two implicit theories of passion, fixed versus growth, and reported several experimental studies. They suggested how one thinks about passion has practical implications. 

If a person views interests as fixed, then once interests are found:
  • less likely other interests will be explored
  • more likely to expect continuing motivation to be high
  • less likely to anticipate difficulties or frustration in pursuit of passion
On the other hand, if a person view interests as developing, then:
  • “strong interest in one area does not preclude developing interests elsewhere”
  • more likely to understand “development may sometimes be difficult”
  • more likely to be maintain interest when facing frustration and difficulties
Their research supported these implications. People with a fixed mindset were more likely to experience decline in interest once pursuit of interest was found to be difficult. O'Keefe and his colleagues suggested, “Urging people to find their passion may lead them to put all their eggs in one basket but then to drop that basket when it becomes difficult to carry.” 

Like most psychological research, the participants in the studies were college students. The authors called for future research exploring their findings in “real-life settings” and among different cultures. 
 
My take-aways:
 
1.  I find passion to be a very interesting subject and enjoyed this paper. I concur with the authors that more research is needed. Here are some of my thoughts:
  • Can one have both fixed and growth mindsets about passion? Some passions may be innate, got to pursue, whereas other passions develop out of life experiences. 
  • Can we measure what one thinks about passion? There are different scales for different types of passionate engagement but is there a more global measure? Perhaps some people tend to find or develop passions whereas others never do.
  • If people understand whether they have a fixed or growth mindset about passion, will that help them “find their passion”? 
  • What are the implications for counseling and coaching? 
  • Does having a passion lead to a better quality of life than not having a passion? Or vice versa?
2. I found this article good for personal reflection. In high school I became very interested in astronomy, learned the stars, plotted meteors, and tried unsuccessfully to photograph a lunar eclipse (would have helped to have loaded film). I applied to colleges and universities to major in astronomy, astrophysics, or physics. My passion was to be an astronomer. But then I encountered calculus, found it more difficult than expected, and at the urging of a psychology professor, pursued another interest – the inner workings of the mind instead of the outer workings of the universe. 
3. So what is your passion? Your passions? 
 
O’Keefe, P. A., Dweck, C. S., & Walton, G. M. (2018). Implicit theories of interest: Finding your passion or developing it. Psychological Science, 29(10), 1653-1664.
 
Image, "Untitled", by Isucc. Image obtained from https://pixabay.com/en/adult-business-businessman-cartoon-1260380/  Used in accordance with: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en
​
© John Ballard, PhD, 2018. All rights reserved.
 _________________________
Decoding the Workplace “deals with principles and practices that are timeless . . . Is this a must-have for managers and would-be managers? Yes.” Academy of Management Learning & Education, June, 2018. Now also available as an audiobook. 

2 Comments

    Archives

    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012

    RSS Feed