The Paradox of Passion:

HOW IT HELPS YOU SUCCEED — AND HOW IT CAN BACKFIRE People who achieve the highest levels of success are often said to be passionate about their work. This sentiment is both exactly right and only half of the story.

THE EXTRAORDINARY SUCCESS of people like Steve Jobs, Richard Branson and Oprah Winfrey is often attributed in part to their high levels of passion for what they do. Indeed, popular discourse commonly describes successful individuals as paragons of passion. Academy Award-winning music composer A.R. Rahman stated this eloquently: “Success comes to those who dedicate everything to their passion in life.”

Prior research has taken an intrapersonal perspective and found that people who are passionate for their work attain increased success by exhibiting high levels of engagement, proactivity, cognitive flexibility and self-efficacy, as well as reducedlevels of stress. This perspective suggests that the beneficial outcomes of passion stem from characteristics within the individual.

In recent research, my colleagues and I offer a complementary perspective. Taking an interpersonal perspective, we propose that expressing passion for one’s work stirs reactions and behaviours in other people that contribute to the success of the passionate individual. Richard Branson himself has recognized these benefits: “When you believe in something, the force of your convictions will spark other people’s interest and motivate them to help you achieve your goals. Passion, like a smile, is contagious. It rubs off on everyone around you and attracts enthusiastic people into your orbit”. In this article I will summarize our research.

Conceptualizing Passion

Passion is ‘a strong feeling towards a personally important value/ preference that sparks intentions and behaviours which express that value/preference’. This definition highlights that the experience of passion captures an intense emotional state, emphasizing

that the target of one’s passion reflects an attribute that has high personal value or strong appeal to the individual. This definition also captures that passion leads individuals to desire engaging and interacting with the target of their passion.

Prior research has found that passion is associated with unique physical manifestations related to outward expressions, including facial expressions, vocal tone and body language. As a result, passion is readily observed by others, and its cues serve as a visible indicator of how passionate the expresser is.

We hypothesized that observers admire those who express passion. We specifically proposed that expressions of passion elicit admiration because these expressions signal one’s dedication to an important outcome, and the desire to pursue personally important beliefs. We predicted that individuals who are perceived as passionate for their work will be admired more by others — who in turn will be more likely to offer them their support. We defined ‘offering support’ as engaging in behaviours that are aligned with the expressers’ goals.

We also explored whether observers do not admire the expression of passion in others when they disagree with the target of their passion. We based this prediction on prior findings that individuals are less likely to engage in prosocial behaviour towards another person when they disagree with their opinions. For example, strangers were more likely to help another person when they shared similar political attitudes than when these diverged. Similarly, people were more likely to mail an ostensibly lost envelope when they agreed with the contents of the envelope than when they disagreed with it.

We proposed that expressions of passion by others will only be admired when observers agree with the target of the passion. Consequently, we suggest that observers will not offer their support to individuals who express their passion for a cause that they disagree with.

We also explored a context where expressions of passion may actually backfire and lead to decreased support from others. We proposed that perceiving someone else as ‘passionate’ becomes threatening when one is competing against that person. That is, perceiving passion in a competitor can imperil an observer’s own chances of success and may thus amplify the threat from a competitor. We proposed that when competing against someone who is perceived as passionate for their work, perceivers will reduce their support to them.

Thus, we set out to show that passion can be a glue that binds people together — but that it can also serve as a gasoline that inflames competitive feelings.

Our Research

We conducted a total of six studies to investigate the interpersonal effects of passion. Study 1 tested whether entrepreneurs who express passion receive more support from investors. We coded entrepreneurs’ pitches on the television show Dragons’ Den. Individuals who take part in this show present to a panel of investors in order to solicit support for their venture. This context allowed us to investigate whether expressions of passion were related to increased support in a naturalistic setting.

We assessed the extent to which entrepreneurs expressed passion for work by coding their expressive displays in the videos of their presentation. We then examined whether entrepreneurs received support from at least one of the dragons, i.e. judges on the show.

FINDING: We found a statistically significant relationship, such that higher ratings of passion were associated with a greater probability that the entrepreneur received an offer. A one standard deviation increase in the expression of passion was associated with a 40.4 per cent increase in the likelihood that the entrepreneur received funding. This provided initial evidence for the interpersonal benefits of passion.

Study 2 used experimental methods to test whether coworkers who express passion are admired more and, in turn, garner increased support in the workplace.

Passion can be a glue that binds people together. But it can also serve as gasoline that inflames competitive feelings.

FINDING: We found causal evidence that individuals who express passion receive greater support. In addition, this study highlighted one pathway — admiration — through which passion increases offered support.

Studies 3a and 3b investigated whether expressing passion leads to greater admiration and support when that expression is not deemed appropriate. In various settings in life, the same behaviours can have different meanings in different contexts. One common driver of variation in perceptions is how appropriate an expression is deemed to be, or whether an expression is ‘correct’ for the situation. Social conventions frequently guide the appropriateness of displays of particular expressions. In order to obtain interpersonal benefits, individuals therefore have to be mindful of not just what they express, but when and how they manage their expressions.

For example, seeing someone express irritability is perceived as more negative in an exchange relationship, where irritability is less consistent with the norms of the relationship, in comparison to in a communal relationship. Similarly, when a lower-power negotiator’s expression of anger is deemed inappropriate, perceivers tend to retaliate with competitive behaviour. We felt that similar conventions may guide when and how the expression of passion is appropriate. That is, individuals who express passion may not be admired more if observers believe that the context does not warrant the expression of passion, or if the expression of passion itself does not follow conventional norms. Thus, individuals who express their passion inappropriately, or in an inappropriate context, may not be able to reap greater admiration and more support.

To investigate this, we returned to our earlier Dragons’ Den dataset from Study 1, supplementing it with codes for the appropriateness of entrepreneurs’ expressions. This allowed us to examine whether passionate entrepreneurs received greater support when their expression of passion was appropriate but did not receive greater support when their expression was inappropriate. For example, entrepreneurs’ passion expressions were deemed appropriate when they explained why they had a personal connection to their pitch. By contrast, entrepreneurs’ expressions of passion were deemed inappropriate when these expressions interrupted the dragons’ clarification questions.

FINDING: Expressions of passion had a statistically significant and FINDING: positive relationship with offered support when appropriateness was high, but there was no statistically significant relationship between expressions of passion and offered support when appropriateness was low.

We next conducted Study 3b, where we manipulated both expressions of passion and the appropriateness of that expression. We reasoned that jobs often come with roles and expectations, some of which may include (or actively exclude) expressions of passion. To this extent, we expected that an employee’s job would determine whether expressions of passion are considered appropriate, and therefore that the interpersonal benefits of passion would be bounded by job type.

We conducted a pilot study that revealed that two jobs which are similar in their nature — accountants and consultants — vary in the perceived appropriateness of expressing passion for work. For example, one participant stated: “Accountants should remain stoic and emotionless.” By contrast, another participant wrote: “I think if I were to hire a consultant, I would want them to be passionate about what they were advising me to do. I would want them to be so sure of their ideas that they were passionate about them.”

We then conducted the main study where participants indicated how much they would support either a consultant or an accountant that either showed passion or no passion.

FINDING: Study 3b provided causal evidence that the interpersonal benefits of passion for work are not attained when the expression of passion is not deemed appropriate.

Study 4 explored whether individuals who express passion are no longer admired and no longer receive support when observers do not agree with the cause of their passion. We felt that disagreeing with the cause of their passion may impede the development of feelings of admiration that expressing passion normally elicits.

Prior research has found that political ideology is closely associated with pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours. We asked U.S. participants to respond to the following item: ‘Generally speaking, I see myself as…’ with a scale ranging from 1 (a strong Republican) to 7 (a strong Democrat). We then presented participants with a hypothetical scenario depicting a co-worker who shares pro-environmental attitudes while either expressing passion or no passion. We expected that expressions of passion would translate into (hypothetical) support for those who are likely to agree with pro-environmental attitudes (i.e. Democrats) but not for those who are likely to disagree with these attitudes (i.e. Republicans).

FINDING: When participants identified as Republican, expressions of passion had no statistically significant effect on admiration. However, as participants identified as Democrat, expressions of passion had a statistically significant and positive effect on admiration.

Finally, Study 5 explored the extent to which individuals who express passion receive decreased support from competitors. We tested whether being perceived as passionate can backfire when competing against others and receive even less support from those competitors.

FINDING: Consistent with our prior studies, we found that within cooperative contexts, passionate co-workers were offered more support than neutral co-workers. However, when the context was competitive, passionate co-workers received less support than neutral co-workers. This suggests that expressions of passion became threatening when they came from a competitor, and individuals reduced their support for these passionate competitors.

In closing

People who achieve the highest levels of success in life are often said to have attained their lofty status because of how passionate they are about their work. This sentiment is both exactly right and only half of the story. It captures the intrapersonal effects of passion, describing how passion infuses individuals with energy and perseverance, but it omits the interpersonal admiration and support that expressing passion can inspire in others.

In the research summarized herein, my colleagues and I found evidence that the success of individuals who are passionate is multiply determined, travelling through both intrapersonal and interpersonal pathways. Moreover, while prior research on passion primarily focuses on its positive consequences, our research extends these findings to potential contexts where expressing passion can backfire and harm one’s ability to succeed.

Stéphane Côté is the Geoffrey Conway Chair in Business Ethics, Professor of Organizational Behaviour & HR Management, Director of the PHD Program and Director of the Clarkson Centre for Business Ethics at the Rotman School of Management. This article summarizes his paper, “The Gravitational Pull of Expressing Passion: When and How Expressing Passion Elicits Status Conferral and Support From Others”, co-authored with Harvard Business School Professor Jon Jachimowicz, Columbia Business School Professor Adam Galinsky, Kellogg School of Management Postdoctoral Fellow Christopher To, and Shira Agasi (Rotman PHD ’15), a Data Scientist at Payoneer. The paper, which includes detailed research citations, was published in Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes. It can be downloaded online.

Expressions of passion became threatening when they came from a competitor.