1. INTRODUCTION

In 2003, a team of psychologists defined passion as a motivational construct. Up until then, passion had only been defined as a cognitive and emotional construct. With the introduction of passion as a motivational construct, a whole field of scientific research burst open. This team of psychologists, lead by Robert J. Vallerand, created the Dualistic Model of Passion (DMP) to present their new way of understanding passion. In 2015, Vallerand wrote, "The Psychology of Passion: A Dualistic Model", which presents a clear narrative of what passion is from the point of view of the Dualistic Model of Passion. This page presents excerpts from "The Psychology of Passion: A Dualistic Model". The next sections 2-6 are direct quotes from "The Psychology of Passion: A Dualistic Model".

2. SCIENTIFIC DEFINITION OF PASSION

Passion is (1) a strong inclination toward a specific object, activity, concept, or person that (2) one loves (or at least strongly likes), (3) highly values, (4) invests time and energy in on a regular basis, and (5) that is part of one’s identity (Vallerand et. al., 2003).

3. PASSION AS A SCIENTIFIC FIELD OF INTEREST

Robert J. Vallerand and colleagues opened up the scientific field of passion in 2003 when they published their article on the Dualistic Model of Passion (DMP) and a series of studies supporting it (Vallerand, R. J., Blanchard, C. M., Margeau, G. A., Koestner, R., Ratelle, C. F., Leonard, M., Gange, M., & Marsolais, J. (2003). Since then, hundreds of studies have been conducted and have supported the DMP.

4. PASSION AND SELF-GROWTH

Those activities that people are passionate about have the best potential for self-growth for 6 reasons:

1. When passionate about an activity, people engage in their beloved activity with full energy, persistently, regularly, several hours weekly (Vallerand et. al., 2003).

2. Passion fosters mastery goals (Elliot, 1997), which are known to be an important part of the learning process, and foster deliberate practice (Ericsson & Charness, 1994).

3. Passion may also allow one to experience positive outcomes such as positive emotions, flow, vitality, concentration, and other positive cognitive and affective experiential states. 

4. Engaging in one’s passionate activity may facilitate self-growth in other areas of one’s life (Mageau & Vallerand, 2007).

5. Because the passionate activity representation is internalized in identity, the self-growth that has been attained within the activity should give access to the optimal use of self-processes that can also generalize to other life domains. 

6. One’s passion for a given activity may lead one to engage in outside activities that may further self-growth in other life spheres.

5. HARMONIOUS PASSION VERSUS OBSESSIVE PASSION

Harmonious passion originates from an autonomous internalization of the activity in identity and leads people to choose to engage in the activity that they love. It mainly leads to adaptive processes such as flow (i.e., a complete absorption of oneself in what one’s doing; Csikszentmihalyi, 1988), mastery goals (i.e., personal improvement goals; Elliot and Church, 1997), and task-coping (i.e., problem-focused strategies altering a situation; Lazarus and Folkman, 1984). It also leads to adaptive outcomes such as positive emotions, subjective vitality, and wellbeing (for reviews, see Curran et al., 2015; Vallerand, 2015; Vallerand and Houlfort, 2019; Pollack et al., 2020).

Obsessive passion originates from a controlled internalization in identity and leads people to experience an uncontrollable urge to engage in the activity that they love. It predicts less adaptive processes (Vallerand, 2015) such as avoidance goals (i.e., avoiding being worse than others; Elliot and Church, 1997), avoidance coping (i.e., behavioral and psychological withdrawal from a situation; Kowalski and Crocker, 2001), ego-involvement (e.g., self-esteem as contingent on one’s performance; Mageau et al., 2011), and less adaptive outcomes such as negative emotions and lower wellbeing (Vallerand, 2015).

6. PASSION COMPARED TO OTHER CONSTRUCTS

Passion is distinct from other constructs. Here are the main constructs related to but distinct from passion.

Zest and Grit - Zest refers to a passion trait in which one would be passionate for most things in life. Zest does not focus on a specific person-object interface, as is the case with passion. Grit (Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, & Kelly, 2007) is defined as a trait reflecting high levels of perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Grit displays the same differences with respect to passion as zest. Thus, there is no person-object specificity and little specific value ascribed to one's specific activities, as one is expected to display grit in most life activities. Contrasting with grit, which it is postulated to always lead to persistence, there are conditions under which passion (and, especially the most active type passion) may not lead to persistence, especially when it is adaptive for the person not to persist in the passionate activity at a given point in time.

Flow - Flow refers to feelings immersed in the activity while engaged in it. However, it differs from passion in important ways. The flow concept is not a motivation construct but rather a cognitive one. Flow is seen as an outcome and not as a motivational determinate, as passion should determine flow and not the other way around.

Personal Interests, Talent-Related Activities, and Commitment - Passion can also be compared to talent-related activities (Rathunde, 1996) and personal interests (Renninger & Hidi, 2002). The most important distinction between passion and these constructs is that these constructs are affective and not motivational in nature. In addition, it is not clear if committed people have internalized the activity in their identity and if they actually love the activity they are committed [to].

Personal Strivings, Personal Projects, Current Concerns, and Life Tasks - A fundamental distinction between passion and the concepts of current concerns (Klinger, 1977), personal strivings (Emmons, 1986), personal projects (Little, 1989), and life tasks (Cantor, 1990) is that these constructs may be pursued as a life goal without loving it.

Intrinsic Motivation - Intrinsic motivation shares some conceptual similarity with passion, as both involve a love for the activity, as the activity is then engaged in for itself (Deci, 1971). However, intrinsically motivated activities are typically not seen as being internalized in the person’s identity and are best seen as emerging from the person-task interaction at the short-term level (Koestner & Losier, 2002). As years of laboratory research conducted on relatively meaningless novel tasks has shown, someone may display intrinsic motivation (or love) for activities of little personal value. This is not the case for passion, as both love and value for the activity are important characteristics of the passion concept.

REFERENCES

Direct quotes have been made in sections 2-6 without using quotation marks from the textbook, "The Psychology of Passion: A Dualistic Model" (2015).