A study by the NUS Motivation and Self-Regulation Lab, directed by Dr. Patricia Chen, developed and tested a Work Passion scale (pictured above) that was recently featured in BBC Worklife in an article titled “How a ‘growth mindset’ can lead to success” on 14 March 2020.

The feature article is available at: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200306-the-surprising-truth-about-finding-your-passion-at-work

Abstract

Passion for work has become increasingly valued, as reflected by its ubiquity in popular and empirical discourse. Yet we lack scientific consensus on the definition of work passion, and a reliable, well-validated measure of work passion that is relevant to workers across various vocations. In this paper, we identified and integrated key themes from existing scientific conceptualizations into a precise definition: Passion for work means to strongly identify with a line of work that one feels motivated to engage in and derives positive affect from doing. We developed a 10-item Work Passion (WP) scale, which we tested across multiple studies with a total of 858 adults, including working adults from two different English-speaking cultural backgrounds (i.e., United States and Singapore), and a two-wave study of employees from various vocations. Our results showed that work passion is associated with a host of beneficial outcomes, including greater career commitment, lower levels of job burnout, less work-home conflict, and fewer physical symptoms. Our research (1) provides an integrated definition of work passion, (2) offers a reliable, cross-culturally tested scale, and (3) highlights important implications for work outcomes associated with being passionate towards one’s line of work.

Reference

Chen, P., Lee, F., & Lim, S. (2020). Loving thy work: Developing a measure of work passion. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 29, 140–158. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359432X.2019.1703680