European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology

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Loving thy work: developing a measure of work

passion

Patricia Chen, Fiona Lee & Sandy Lim

To cite this article: Patricia Chen, Fiona Lee & Sandy Lim (2020) Loving thy work: developing
a measure of work passion, European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 29:1,
140-158, DOI: 10.1080/1359432X.2019.1703680

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1359432X.2019.1703680

Published online: 16 Dec 2019.

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EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF WORK AND ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
2020, VOL. 29, NO. 1, 140–158
https://doi.org/10.1080/1359432X.2019.1703680

Loving thy work: developing a measure of work passion

a
Patricia Chen , Fiona Leeb and Sandy Lima
a
National University of Singapore, Singapore; bStanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Passion for work has become increasingly valued, as reflected by its ubiquity in popular and empirical Received 1 April 2018
discourse. Yet we lack scientific consensus on the definition of work passion, and a reliable, well-validated Accepted 2 December 2019
measure of work passion that is relevant to workers across various vocations. In this paper, we identified KEYWORDS
and integrated key themes from existing scientific conceptualizations into a precise definition: Passion for Passion; vocation;
work means to strongly identify with a line of work that one feels motivated to engage in and derives motivation; well-being
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.

“The Greeks didn’t write obituaries. They only asked after a man died:
‘Did he have passion?’”
– Serendipity (2001)
Society has been placing increasing importance on the
meaning of work, rather than its mere survival value (Rosso,
Dekas, & Wrzesniewski, 2010; Tucker, 2002; Wrzesniewski,
Dutton, & Debebe, 2003). Given that most people spend more
than half their waking hours working, it is not surprising that
they want to enjoy their work and find fulfilment in it. When
asked for the secret to success, business magnate Warren Buffet
simply advised: “You find your passion.” This sentiment was
similarly espoused by CEO of Dell, Michael Dell, who famously
quipped, “Passion should be the fire that drives your life’s
work.”
Yet passion for work is not just a value prescribed by success-
ful businesspeople. It has become an emerging social trend,
widely referred to among popular and empirical discourse
(Cardon, Wincent, Singh, & Drnovsek, 2009b; Coleman, Gulati, &
Segovia, 2012; Kang & Albion, 2005; Newport, 2012; Perttula &
Cardon, 2011; Tucker, 2002). Since 1980, the use of the phrase
“follow your passion” has increased by more than thirty-fold in
our English literature, doubling in its prevalence within the past
two decades alone (Michel et al., 2011). Moreover, surveys of
workers from various occupations found that 77% of workers
reported at least moderate levels of passion for their work
(Vallerand & Houlfort, 2003).
Despite the widespread use of this construct and societal
endorsement of it, we still have a limited scientific understand-
ing of how and how much work passion is experienced among
workers from various occupations (Perrewé, Hochwarter, Ferris,
McAllister, & Harris, 2014). In their call for more research on the
topic of passion for work, Perrewé et al. (2014) stressed,
“Despite its practical significance, the organizational sciences
have yet to develop an informed understanding of passion’s
content domain, predictive efficacy, and influence on relevant
outcomes” (p. 145).
To date, most of the empirical studies measuring vocational
passion have either focused on distinguishing different forms
that passion can take (Vallerand et al., 2003; Vallerand, Houlfort,
& Forest, 2014) or on examining passion within the specific
domain of entrepreneurship (Cardon, Gregoire, Stevens, &
Patel, 2013; Cardon et al., 2009b; Chen, Yao, & Kotha, 2009).
However, our science still lacks, and could benefit from, a
validated scale focused on quantifying one’s level of work
passion across various vocational contexts. In this paper, we
address this need by (1) offering an integrative definition of
what it means to be passionate about one’s line of work, (2)
developing a Work Passion scale that can be used across a
variety of vocations, and (3) testing its factor structure and
validity among large samples of working adults cross-culturally
and longitudinally.
Defining work passion
Three published definitions of work passion have significantly
influenced the existing empirical research on passion for work:
Baum and Locke (2004) affect-focused definition of passion
applied to entrepreneurs, Vallerand et al. (2003) definition of
passion that can take on more and less adaptive Cardon et al.
(2009b), (2013) definition of entrepreneurial passion. Among
these scientific definitions of passion, some components of
their definitions overlap, whereas others do not. To provide
scientific consensus on one definition of work passion, we

CONTACT Patricia Chen patchen@nus.edu.sg

© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis
 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF WORK AND ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
reviewed these previous definitions and distilled the core char-
acteristics of the experience of work passion.
Historically, Western philosophers like Plato or Descartes
have associated passion with intense, high arousal emotions
that are antithetical to reason, and passion was even consid-
ered a barrier to logical judgement at times (Vallerand et al.,
2014). Applying this idea to an analysis of professional life, early
scientific conceptualizations of work passion were heavily influ-
enced by such notions of passion as an intensely arousing,
emotionally-charged experience. One prominent example is
Baum and Locke (2004) definition of work passion as “the
emotions of love, attachment, and longing” (p. 588) – in other
words, passion for work was construed as a purely affective
experience.
Vallerand et al. (2003), (2014) offered the first definition of
passion that recognized components of the experience beyond
mere positive affect: People are passionate about an activity
when they love the activity, highly value it, and invest time and
energy into doing it. Importantly, the activity, such as work, has
to be regarded as a central part of one’s identity to become an
object of passion. Depending on how people internalize the
activity into their identity, their passion for it could take on
different forms. According to their Dualistic Model of Passion
(Vallerand, 2008; Vallerand, Paquet, Philippe, & Charest, 2010),
harmonious passion forms when one internalizes the activity
autonomously, such that the engagement in the activity is
intrinsically motivated and generally well-balanced with other
life activities. By contrast, obsessive passion develops when the
activity is internalized in a controlled manner, and it is charac-
terized by feeling pressured to engage in the activity and the
risk of experiencing the work as conflicting with other parts of
life (Vallerand & Houlfort, 2003; Vallerand & Miquelon, 2007).
Research in this vein has primarily focused on differentiating
the two forms of passion towards work (Forest, Mageau,
Sarrazin, & Morin, 2011; Vallerand & Houlfort, 2003; Vallerand
et al., 2014) and non-work activities (e.g., hobbies, gambling,
sports, music; Vallerand, 2018; Vallerand et al., 2003).
Harmonious and obsessive forms of passion towards their
work predict a number of important outcomes, such as con-
centration, psychological well-being, work satisfaction, job
burnout, and work performance (Vallerand et al., 2014).
Although the Dualistic Model of Passion has made significant
inroads into assessing the different forms (harmonious or
obsessive) that passion can take, and identifying its antece-
dents, correlates, and outcomes, it does not focus on quantify-
ing how passionate a person is in a way that comprehensively
captures key definitional aspects of passion on-the-job. This is
one of the key contributions of our paper.
Another prominent approach to understanding passion
within the work context comes from research on entrepre-
neurial passion (Cardon et al., 2013; Cardon & Kirk, 2013;
Cardon, Sudek, & Mitteness, 2009a; Chen et al., 2009). In
reviewing the literature on passion in entrepreneurship,
Cardon et al. (2009b) identified three convergent definitional
themes from prior research: (a) intense positive emotion, (b)
directed towards entrepreneurial roles that entrepreneurs
identify with, and (c) the motivation to engage in these
roles. Therefore, they defined passion as consciously accessi-
ble, intense positive feelings that arise from engaging in
141
venture-related roles (inventor, founder, or developer),
which have meaning and salience to the identity of the
entrepreneur (Cardon et al., 2013, 2009b). Their definition
makes especially salient the positive affect and identity-rele-
vance that are key parts of the passionate experience (Cardon,
Gregoire, Stevens, & Patel, 2013). However, they primarily
focused their study of work passion within the context of
entrepreneurial roles, and have not tested the extent to
which this model can be broadly applied to many different
kinds of vocations. Here, we aimed to develop an understand-
ing of how work passion is experienced that can generalize
across vocations.
An integrated conceptualization of work passion
Because each theoretical camp has worked primarily with its
own definition of passion, there has been little in the way of
integration across these different definitions. To make progress
on understanding how passion is experienced in people’s
everyday working lives and how it affects them, our science
would benefit from having a consensual definition that identi-
fies and integrates the core themes among previous scientific
approaches, while also being accurate in its representation of
passion on-the-job, and applicable across various vocations. In
this paper, our goal was to pin down such a definition from the
scientific and layperson’s perspective, and to construct a valid
way of quantifying the experience of work passion across
vocations.
First, we describe a conceptualization of work passion that
integrates the key definitional elements from the aforemen-
tioned scientific definitions. Prior scientific definitions of work
passion agree upon three key aspects that make up work
passion: (1) subjectively experienced positive affect, (2) strong
identification with the work, and (3) being motivated to engage
in the work. Although there are also other definitional aspects
that have been included in some scientific definitions but not
others (such as highly intense positive arousal and experien-
cing an obsessive desire to work while engaging in other
activities), we focus primarily on the characteristics of the pas-
sionate experience that most of these well-established scienti-
fic definitions agree upon as central.
Positive affect
All three scientific definitions of work passion mentioned above
(Baum & Locke, 2004; Cardon et al., 2013, 2009b; Vallerand &
Houlfort, 2003; Vallerand et al., 2014), and others (Chen,
Ellsworth, & Schwarz, 2015; Chen et al., 2009; Perttula &
Cardon, 2011; Zigarmi, Nimon, Houson, Witt, & Diehl, 2009),
agree that the subjective experience is inherently laden with
positive affect. For example, in defining and measuring passion,
researchers have often used positively valenced words such as
“love” (Baum & Locke, 2004; Vallerand et al., 2003) “like”
(Cardon et al., 2012; Vallerand, 2018) and “exciting” (Cardon et
al., 2012). Although Vallerand et al. (2003) suggest that passion
can sometimes also involve negative, obsessive feelings, they
are the only group who include and emphasize such negativity
in their Dualistic Model of Passion. For the purpose of high-
lighting core, agreed-upon themes in prior scientific definitions
of work passion, we focus on the positive affect component
142 P. CHEN ET AL.
that all three well-established theories recognize as core to the
experience of passion.
Strong identification
Importantly, people who feel passionate about their work also
tend to identify strongly with their vocations at a personal level,
often describing themselves by their professions, such as “I am
a teacher,” “I am a nurse” or “I am a carpenter.” (Cardon et al.,
2009b; Vallerand et al., 2014). In fact, what crucially distin-
guishes a passion from any other interest is that a passion is
“so self-defining that it represents a central feature of one’s
identity” (Vallerand, 2018, p. 151). Therefore, a person who is
passionate about their work construes the work as self-relevant
and meaningful (Cardon et al., 2013; Vallerand et al., 2003). For
instance, entrepreneurs who are passionate engage in their
roles because their work validates and affirms that central
identity of theirs (Cardon et al., 2009b); more generally, people
pursue work that they find particularly meaningful (Perrewé et
al., 2014) because engaging in these activities reinforces a
sense of who they are.
Motivation
Passion is essentially a motivational experience, beyond just
an affective one (Vallerand, Houlfort, & Bourdeau, 2019). For
example, Vallerand et al.’s (2003) definition of passion states
that it involves experiencing a “strong inclination” towards
engaging in the activity of passion (p. 757), and that being
passionate requires investing significant amounts of time
and energy into the activity. In their review of the entrepre-
neurial passion literature, Cardon et al. (2009b) emphasized
that passion “has a motivational effect that stimulates [work-
ers] to overcome obstacles and remain engaged” (p. 512).
Baum and Locke (2004) included “longing” to engage in the
work as part of their definition, suggesting that people
experience a motivational pull to work even when they
might not be currently engaging in it. A person who is
consistently not at all motivated to engage in their work
cannot be highly passionate about it. Therefore, we consider
the motivation to engage in one’s work as key to the defini-
tion of passion.
Our definition of work passion
We have identified three key elements of work passion: positive
affect towards engaging in the work, considering the work an
important part of one’s identity, and being motivated to
engage in the work. We view each of these psychological states
as related to one another and that collectively characterize the
experience of work passion. We describe the experience of
work passion as “holistic,” meaning that these various elements
of work passion are “intimately [connected] with one another,
and explicable only by reference to the entirety of the experi-
ence” (Dictionary.com, 2012 www.dictionary.com). In other
words, to understand work passion, we consider and measure
the entirety of the experience, rather than isolating each com-
ponent on its own (Merriam-Webster dictionary, 2019). Because
we view work passion as a holistic experience, we expect – and
test in our studies – that these 3 definitional elements of work
passion would load onto a single latent factor.
Comparisons with other definitions
Our definition of work passion goes beyond Baum and Locke
(2004) conceptualization of work passion as purely the emo-
tions of love, attachment, and longing. Although we also
include positive affective states, such as love and enjoyment,
in our conceptualization of work passion, we also include other
important experiences such as motivation to engage in the
work, and identification with the work.
Our definition differs in some ways from Vallerand et al.’s
(2003) definition of passion as “a strong inclination toward an
activity that people like, that they find important, and in which
they invest time and energy” (p. 757). One important distinc-
tion is that we do not specify that people need to invest
significant time and energy into a particular line of work to
consider it a passion. Many people do invest significant time
and energy into their work responsibilities, for reasons other
than passion (e.g., professional ambition, financial need).
Moreover, a person can be passionate about a hobby of theirs
(e.g. fishing, rock climbing), but not have much time or practical
opportunity to engage in it. Therefore, time and energy
invested may not always be a good factor to distinguish
between people who are highly passionate towards their
work and people who are less so. Unlike the Dualistic Model
of Passion (Vallerand et al., 2003; Vallerand & Houlfort, 2003),
but in line with other definitions of passion (e.g., Baum & Locke,
2004; Chen et al., 2009; Zigarmi et al., 2009), our definition
considers the experience of work passion unidimensional.
Like Cardon et al.’s (2012, 2013) definition, ours similarly
emphasizes positive affect and strong identification with the
line of work. However, our definition of work passion is meant
to apply more broadly across different vocations, and it empha-
sizes motivation to engage in the work as much as it focuses on
the other two elements of passion.
Characteristics of work passion
Our conceptualization of work passion has a number of char-
acteristics: First, we focus specifically on the vocational level (e.
g., “automobile engineer” or “journalist”), rather than how pas-
sionate people feel about specific employers (e.g., “General
Motors”) or their day-to-day work responsibilities on the job
(e.g., “fixing mechanical issues” or “writing reports”). This is
because this vocational level of analysis is arguably most rele-
vant to the way that people generally self-identify with their
work (e.g., Vallerand & Houlfort, 2003). For example, we often
hear people identify themselves as “a nurse”, “a teacher”, or “a
researcher”. One does not have to constantly be passionate
about the everyday minutiae of every responsibility on-the-
job, nor feel tied to a specific employer, to experience passion
towards one’s line of work. People could change employers, or
their everyday tasks on-the-job might be unpredictable (e.g.,
teachers’ classroom management, doctors seeing and diagnos-
ing different patients), and they could still be passionate about
their profession.
Second, work passion is shaped by an interaction between
workers and their work contexts (Edwards, Cable, Williamson,
Lambert, & Shipp, 2006). To the extent that salient features of
the person-environment interaction remain constant over time,
 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF WORK AND ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
one’s work passion can be experienced as relatively stable as
well; but as interactions change over time, passion can also
fluctuate accordingly. Consistent with much prior work (e.g.,
Baum & Locke, 2004; Cardon et al., 2013; Vallerand et al., 2003),
we consider work passion as an experiential continuum, rather
than a present-or-absent dichotomy.
Although some researchers define passion as involving an
intensely positive experience, they often do not clearly state
what specific threshold of intensity counts as “intense” enough
to be considered passion (Baum & Locke, 2004; Cardon et al.,
2009b; Chen et al., 2009). We follow the common understand-
ing that passion involves positive affect, but we do not impose
the requirement that this positivity needs to be intense. One
reason is that, the extent to which work passion needs to be an
“intensely positive” experience has not been robustly empiri-
cally demonstrated as a necessary part of work passion. The
second reason is that not all cultures are equally predisposed to
reporting such extreme experiences of affect (Diener & Diener,
2009; Swinyard, Kau, & Phua, 2001; Tsai, Knutson, & Fung, 2006),
therefore we do not believe that a threshold of affective inten-
sity should be drawn in a way that penalizes some cultures over
others.
Measuring work passion
Given this definition of work passion, we sought to find a
reliable way to measure the experience. There are currently
two prominent, empirically-validated scales that have been
published in the literature to assess people’s passion towards
their work: Vallerand and Houlfort (2003) Passion Towards Work
scale and the Entrepreneurial Passion measure (Cardon et al.,
2013).1 While these measures thus far have been valuable in
advancing our understanding of this phenomena, they also
have their own limitations.
The Passion Towards Work Scale (Vallerand & Houlfort,
2003), a work-oriented counterpart of the original domain-
general Passion Scale (Vallerand et al., 2003), has arguably
been one of the most widely used scales in empirical assess-
ments of work passion thus far. Notably, this scale was pri-
marily designed to distinguish between harmonious and
obsessive forms of work passion, rather than to measure
the degree to which people experience work passion in and
of itself. This distinction is explicit in previous studies, where
the researchers measured harmonious passion and obsessive
passion using items that were separate from questions about
the definitional elements of passion (which include how
much people reported that the activity was a “passion”
from their perspective, how much they valued the activity,
and how much time and energy they invested in the activity;
see Vallerand et al., 2003 Study, p. 1). They reported partial
correlations between each type of passion (harmonious/
obsessive) and items assessing their definition of passion,
which ranged in magnitude from .16 to .57. These correla-
tions are not as high as one might expect if each of the
harmonious and obsessive passion subscales were meant to
capture these definitional elements of passion. Hence, there
remains a need for a validated measure that can capture the
degree to which people experience the key aspects of work
passion.
143
Another well-known vocational passion scale is Cardon et
al.’s (2013) Entrepreneurial Passion measure. Specifically
designed for the entrepreneurship domain, it assesses two
primary dimensions of passion – intense positive feelings and
identity centrality – across three key entrepreneurship domains
of inventing, founding, and developing. Examples of items
include: “It is exciting to figure out new ways to solve unmet
market needs that can be commercialized.” and “Being the
founder of a business is an important part of who I am.” This
scale is a useful measure specifically for entrepreneurial pas-
sion, because it focuses on the kinds of roles that entrepreneurs
identify with. However, these items about inventing, founding,
and developing are not as relevant to workers in other voca-
tions. Because of its domain-specificity, the Entrepreneurial
Passion measure is not appropriate for assessing vocational
passion experienced by people in a wide variety of other
occupations.
In short, our science does not currently have a validated
measure of work passion that captures the degree to which
people experience work passion across a range of different
vocations. The lack of such a measurement tool is a significant
barrier to scientific advancement aimed at understanding the
antecedents, correlates, and outcomes of feeling passionate
about one’s work across occupations. Our goal was to initiate
the development and validation of a vocation-general work
passion scale, which captures what it means to be passionate
about one’s line of work across various occupations, across
time, and across different cultures.
Summary of studies
Guided by our definition of work passion and established scale
development procedures (DeVellis, 2017; Hinkin, 1995), we
developed and tested a 10-item measure of work passion
across 3 studies with 858 participants from various lines of
work. To complement our review of the scientific definitions
of work passion, in Study 1, we surveyed lay people about how
they defined work passion. We then compared and combined
the key themes that emerged from their responses with the key
definitional elements from prior scientific knowledge to gener-
ate initial scale items. In Study 2, we reduced these items to
form a 10-item Work Passion scale, and we tested the scale
factor structure across two samples of working adults in
America and Singapore. In Study 3, we examined our scale’s
convergent, divergent, predictive, and incremental validity in a
two-wave study with working adults from various occupations
over an eight-month period of time.
Study 1: lay definition and item generation
It was important to us to create a scale that would be both
scientifically informed and consistent with the layperson’s
experience of work passion. As described, scientific theories
have identified positive affect, strong identification, and moti-
vation as key to the experience of work passion – but how
consistent are these with the way that laypeople experience
passion in their working lives? In this study, we surveyed a
random sample of working adults to understand how passion
for one’s line of work is naturally defined by the layperson. We
144 P. CHEN ET AL.
identified core themes using qualitative coding methods, and
discussed how those compared with the three definitional
themes from our review of the scientific literature. Finally, we
worked with experts to generate an initial pool of scale items.
Participants
We recruited 51 adults (54.9% male, 2.0% other gender,
Mage = 30.8 years, 70.6% currently employed) living in the
USA through Amazon Turk to participate in our online survey.
They came from various lines of work (e.g., education, insur-
ance, media, consulting, manufacturing, accounting, food and
beverage) and occupational ranks (e.g., sales associate, network
administrator, senior engineer, manager). Analysing the data
using our full sample versus including only data from those
who had indicated that they were currently employed pro-
duced the same themes.
Procedure
To find out how laypeople define passion, we asked our parti-
cipants to describe how they defined passion for a line of work
in an open-ended response question:
“We are interested in how people feel towards their lines of work. By
“line of work,” we mean the profession that a person is in or the type
of industry that a person associates with. How would you define
having passion for a line of work?”
Results
Our thematic data coding method was modelled after the
phenomenological method in qualitative research, whereby
we first developed an understanding of work passion in a
bottom-up fashion directly from participants’ responses, rather
than imposing a priori theories (Miles & Huberman, 2019;
Moustakas, 1994). We read all participants’ responses and iden-
tified 4 main themes that naturally emerged from our partici-
pants’ responses: motivation to engage in their work (e.g., “You
would do the work even if you didn’t get paid”, “trying your
best everyday to do the best for your work that you can”),
positive affect towards their work (e.g., “in love with the indus-
try”, “you enjoy your line of work”), valuing the work as person-
ally important or meaningful (e.g., “find it meaningful”, “[you]
are proud of your accomplishments in the field”), and working
outside work hours or at the expense of other parts of life (e.g.,
“interest that persists even outside of working hours”, “satu-
rates many areas of your life, other than your defined working
hours”).
Two independent coders coded whether each participant’s
response included each of the 4 themes (1 = theme included in
the response, 0 = theme not included in the response; interrater
reliability K values were .82 and above across the 4 themes).
Participants’ responses could include more than one theme in
their definition of work passion. Out of the 4 themes, motiva-
tion was mentioned the most frequently (66.7% of responses),
followed by positive affect (56.9%), personal value (23.5%), and
the theme that was the least frequently mentioned by only 4
participants was working outside work hours or at the expense
of other parts of life (7.8%).
Discussion
We found a high degree of consistency between the layperson’s
and scientific definitions of work passion: Both highlighted posi-
tive affect, identification with the work (i.e., valuing the work as
personally important or meaningful), and motivation to engage
in the work. A small percentage of our participants also noted
that being passionate sometimes involves working outside work
hours or at the expense of other parts of life.
Item generation
We worked with experts to generate 12 precisely-worded items
from these 4 core themes of positive affect, identification, moti-
vation, and prioritizing work at the expense of other parts of life,
while also referencing relevant items in the existing Passion
Towards Work (Vallerand & Houlfort, 2003) and entrepreneurial
passion (Cardon et al., 2013) scales. Rather than focusing on the
quantity of items generated, we prioritized precision in our
question wording to be as close as possible to the theoretical
themes that emerged from scientific and laypeople’s definitions.
We generated 4 items to capture motivation (e.g., “How much
time do you spend thinking about your work because you enjoy
it, not because you have to?”, “How motivated are you to do a
good job at work?”), 3 items about positive affect (e.g. “How
much would you say you love doing your work?”, “How much
would you say you enjoy doing your work?”), 3 items about
identification with the work (e.g., “How central is your work to
who you are?”, “How important would you say your work is to
you?”), and 2 items about prioritizing work outside work hours or
at the expense of other parts of life (“How many other activities in
your life are you willing to cut back on for the sake of your
work?”, “Outside your regular work hours, how often do you
choose to spend time on your work rather than on other activ-
ities?”). This produced an initial pool of 12 items, which we then
narrowed down in our next study.
Study 2: item reduction in two English-speaking
cultures
In Study 2, we collected data from a sample of working adults
working in an English-speaking Western country (USA) and a
sample working in an English-speaking Eastern country
(Singapore). We factor analysed the initial 12 items within
each of these cross-cultural samples, and reduced the number
of items to form a final scale that applies to workers across a
variety of vocations from both Western and Eastern cultural
work contexts. Given our goal to create a holistic, unidimen-
sional measure of work passion (Clark & Watson, 1995), we set
out to identify and retain the items that would load onto one
common latent factor of work passion.
Participants
We recruited working adults who were currently working in
either America or Singapore, of at least 18 years of age, and
 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF WORK AND ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
were either citizens or Permanent Residents of their respective
countries, through the Survey Sampling International web
panel. Web panel samples have previously been shown to
be empirically comparable to other methods of sampling,
and similarly representative of the sampled populations
(Braunsberger, Wybenga, & Gates, 2007; Fricker, 2008). All par-
ticipants were recruited within the same two-week time period.
We sampled both American and Singaporean working
adults with the aim to create and validate a scale that is not
just specific to one culture, but generalizable across more than
one English-speaking work culture. We chose a Singaporean
sample because Singapore is an Asian society that uses English
as its official language, thereby providing linguistically similar
cultures for our scale validation, and avoiding problems inher-
ent in translation and interpretation. We tested our scale in
these two countries as a start, while acknowledging that there
are other Western and Eastern work cultures (beyond USA and
Singapore) that can also be examined in the future.
A total of 603 participants took part in our online survey. To
ensure the quality of our data, we wanted to make sure that
everyone included took the survey seriously, was working at least
part-time, and responded to the Work Passion scale items with
their line of work in mind. We excluded 30 participants who gave
nonsensical answers (e.g., “jhbjhbjb”) to more than one open-
ended question, 12 participants who indicated that they were
not working at all (e.g., full-time students), 5 who did not list a
line of work, and 6 who were suspected of not taking the survey
seriously (e.g., answering “NA” to almost all the open-ended ques-
tions). We included 550 participants in the analysis – 271 working
adults from America and 279 working adults from Singapore.
The American sample was 48.3% male, 1.5% gender unre-
ported; the Singaporean sample was 52.7% male, 2.2% gender
unreported. The mean age was 40.9 years (range = 18 to 64) for
American participants and 36.8 years (range = 19 to 63) for
Singaporean participants. The American sample was 69.4%
white, 8.5% Asian, 9.2% African American, 8.5% Hispanic/
Latino, 2.6% other racial group, and 1.8% did not report their
race. The Singapore sample was 1.1% white, 93.9% Asian, 2.5%
other racial group, and 2.5% did not report their race. In
America, 14.0% had at least a high school education, 23.6% a
diploma, 41.7% a Bachelor’s degree, 11.8% a Master’s degree,
2.6% a professional degree, 1.8% a doctoral degree, and 4.4%
unreported. In Singapore, 1.1% had at least a Primary school
education, 11.5% a Secondary school education, 3.6% a Junior
College or “O” Level equivalent education, 26.9% a diploma,
41.2% a Bachelor’s degree, 8.2% a Master’s degree, 1.8% a
professional degree, 1.1% a doctorate degree, and 4.7% unre-
ported. Similar proportions of workers in both samples had at
least a Bachelor’s degree (41.7% in America and 41.2% in
Singapore) and they worked in a variety of industries (account-
ing, information technology, education, engineering, human
resources, social work, transportation, healthcare, agriculture,
etc.). The median individual income of the American sample
was between US$50,000 to US$59,999 per year. For the
Singaporean sample, the median (gross) individual income
was between SG$3,000 to SG$3,999 per month (or SG$36,000
to SG$47,988 per year). The reported incomes in our sample
were comparable to the corresponding population median
incomes at the time in America (US$50,033/year for men and
145
US$39,157/year for women; U.S. Census Bureau, 2014) and
Singapore (SG$3,705/month or SG$44,460/year; Singapore
Ministry of Manpower: Income, 2014).
Procedure
Our initial 12-item scale was administered as part of a larger
survey on work-related attitudes to American and Singaporean
working adults. All items were presented in the same order to
participants in both countries.
Results
To reduce the items in our Work Passion scale, we first ran
exploratory factor analyses to determine which items to retain.
Then, we used confirmatory factor analyses to ascertain how
well a unidimensional model fit the data from our American
and Singaporean samples, separately. We describe the reliabil-
ity and distribution of the final scale.
Exploratory factor analyses
We ran exploratory factor analyses using maximum likelihood
with promax rotation and listwise deletion for the American
and Singaporean samples separately. In both samples, a two-
factor structure emerged from the 12 items, including a domi-
nant factor (America: eigenvalue = 7.08, 59.0% variance
explained; Singapore: eigenvalue = 6.38, 53.2% variance
explained) and a second factor (America: eigenvalue = .77,
6.4% variance explained; Singapore: eigenvalue = .69, 5.7%
variance explained). All items except 2 loaded moderately to
highly on the first factor (America: .40 – .95; Singapore: .35 –
.94). The two items about prioritizing work at the expense of
other aspects of life loaded highly on the second factor.
Because these items seemed to measure a different construct
about the willingness to sacrifice other activities in life for work,
we dropped those two items and only retained the 10 items
that loaded highly on the first factor in our Work Passion scale.
Hence, the 10 items retained represented the 3 key themes of
positive affect, identification, and motivation that were com-
mon to both scientific and lay definitions of work passion.
Confirmatory factor analyses
Next, we conducted confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using
Stata v13.1 to test the unidimensionality of the 10 items retained.
According to Hu and Bentler (1999) 2-index presentation strat-
egy and fit criteria, goodness-of-fit statistics indicated that a
single factor model fit the data well for both the American
sample (χ2 (35) = 135.70, p < .001, RMSEA = .106, CFI = .951,
SRMR = .037) and the Singaporean sample (χ2 (35) = 73.30,
p < .001, RMSEA = .066, CFI = .976, SRMR = .030). The 10 retained
items all loaded highly onto a single construct: work passion
(America: factor loadings ranged from .61 to .91; Singapore:
factor loadings ranged from .52 to .88). Further removing items
did not significantly improve the model fit or our theoretical
conceptualization. In both the American and Singaporean sam-
ples, we tested a second-order multidimensional model, with
positive affect, identity-relevance, and motivation as first-order
factors, and work passion as a second-order factor, but this
second-order model failed to converge.
146 P. CHEN ET AL.

Therefore, the final Work Passion scale comprised of 10-
items (see Appendix). Inter-item correlations are presented in
Table 1 and factor loadings (ranging from .58 to .91) are sum-
marized in Table 2.
Reliability
The 10-item Work Passion scale was internally consistent in
both countries sampled (America: α = .94; Singapore: α = .93).
Item-total correlations were sufficiently high, averaging .77
(range: .60 – .88) for the American sample and .72 (range:
.51 – .84) for the Singaporean sample.
Distribution
Our 10-item Work Passion scale was approximately normally dis-
tributed in both American and Singaporean samples. We found
that average Work Passion scale ratings were significantly higher
among American workers (M = 3.46, SD = .81) than Singaporean
workers (M = 3.21, SD = .65), Welch’s t(516) = 3.96, p < .001, 95% CI
of mean difference = [.12, .37].2 These results are consistent with
previous cross-cultural research, which have found that Americans
tend to give higher scale ratings than Singaporeans on general
well-being and life satisfaction measures (Diener & Diener, 2009; Li,
Patel, Balliet, Tov, & Scollon, 2011; Swinyard et al., 2001).
Discussion
This study helped us narrow down our scale items, and pro-
vided empirical evidence to support the internal consistency
and unidimensional factor structure of our 10-item Work
Passion scale. This internal consistency and unidimensionality
replicated across American and Singaporean working adult
populations.

Table 1. Work passion scale inter-item correlations in study 2 (USA and Singapore) and study 3 (time 1 and time 2).
Study 2 USA
Items 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1. How much would you say you love doing your work -
2. How often do you feel positively about your work? .76** -
3. How important would you say your work is to you? .65** .60** -
4. How often would you say that you wake up in the morning looking forward to working? .71** .68** .60** -
5. How much would you say you enjoy doing your work? .84** .76** .65** .75** -
6. How central is your work to who you are? .65** .57** .59** .65** .69** -
7. How much time do you spend thinking about your work because you enjoy it, not because .69** .70** .56** .74** .72** .71** -
you have to?
8. How fast does time seem to pass when you are fully engaged in your work? .54** .59** .43** .45** .54** .45** .46** -
9. To what extent is the work fulfiling to you? .78** .74** .66** .69** .76** .68** .72** .56** -
10. How motivated are you to do your work well? .56** .60** .52** .49** .62** .43** .44** .57** .53** -
Study 2 Singapore
1. How much would you say you love doing your work -
2. How often do you feel positively about your work? .73** -
3. How important would you say your work is to you? .60** .55** -
4. How often would you say that you wake up in the morning looking forward to working? .72** .65** .54** -
5. How much would you say you enjoy doing your work? .79** .73** .58** .77** -
6. How central is your work to who you are? .62** .58** .55** .59** .61** -
7. How much time do you spend thinking about your work because you enjoy it, not because .59** .56** .38** .68** .61** .57** -
you have to?
8. How fast does time seem to pass when you are fully engaged in your work? .46** .43** .40** .41** .47** .33** .38** -
9. To what extent is the work fulfiling to you? .67** .60** .47** .65** .65** .58** .60** .39** -
10. How motivated are you to do your work well? .67** .59** .57** .60** .67** .58** .52** .47** .64** -
Study 3 Time 1
1. How much would you say you love doing your work -
2. How often do you feel positively about your work? .77** -
3. How important would you say your work is to you? .74** .67** -
4. How often would you say that you wake up in the morning looking forward to working? .81** .73** .72** -
5. How much would you say you enjoy doing your work? .87** .75** .77** .85** -
6. How central is your work to who you are? .69** .58** .74** .66** .71** -
7. How much time do you spend thinking about your work because you enjoy it, not because .73** .67** .62** .75** .72** .68** -
you have to?
8. How fast does time seem to pass when you are fully engaged in your work? .47** .48** .45** .46** .47** .36** .46** -
9. To what extent is the work fulfiling to you? .83** .75** .74** .78** .83** .72** .74** .51** -
10. How motivated are you to do your work well? .50** .53** .52** .49** .47** .41** .48** .44** .54** -
Study 3 Time 2
1. How much would you say you love doing your work -
2. How often do you feel positively about your work? .78** -
3. How important would you say your work is to you? .74** .73** -
4. How often would you say that you wake up in the morning looking forward to working? .83** .78** .77** -
5. How much would you say you enjoy doing your work? .89** .81** .73** .86** -
6. How central is your work to who you are? .64** .59** .66** .67** .62** -
7. How much time do you spend thinking about your work because you enjoy it, not because .80** .71** .72** .77** .77** .74** -
you have to?
8. How fast does time seem to pass when you are fully engaged in your work? .61** .63** .55** .54** .59** .43** .56** -
9. To what extent is the work fulfiling to you? .84** .79** .75** .85** .85** .71** .78** .61** -
10. How motivated are you to do your work well? .52** .56** .56** .57** .57** .43** .55** .56** .64** -
**p < .01 (two-tailed).
 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF WORK AND ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY 147

Table 2. Factor loadings of the work passion scale items in study 2 and study 3, based on a factor analysis (maximum likelihood) with promax rotation.
Factor Loadings
Study 2 Study 2 Study 3 Study 3
Scale Item USA Singapore Time 1 Time 2
1. How much would you say you love doing your work? .89 .88 .92 .92
2. How often do you feel positively about your work? .85 .80 .82 .85
3. How important would you say your work is to you? .73 .66 .82 .82
4. How often would you say that you wake up in the morning looking forward to working? .82 .83 .88 .90
5. How much would you say you enjoy doing your work? .91 .88 .93 .93
6. How central is your work to who you are? .76 .70 .78 .71
7. How much time do you spend thinking about your work because you enjoy it, not because you have to? .82 .70 .82 .85
8. How fast does time seem to pass when you are fully engaged in your work? *We are interested in your subjective feeling .61 .52 .52 .64
of how fast time passes.
9. To what extent is the work fulfiling to you? .87 .78 .90 .92
10. How motivated are you to do a good job at work? .65 .78 .56 .62
Extraction Eigenvalue 6.35 5.78 6.49 6.76
Extraction % of variance 63.46 57.84 64.92 67.62
*Listwise deletion was used in the factor analyses to deal with missing data. At Study 3 Time 1, all data available at that time point were used; at Study 3 Time 2, all data
available at both Times 1 and 2 were used (i.e., participants completed Time 1 and the Time 2 follow-up).

Because our Work Passion scale has to be of broad relevance
to a variety of different vocations, our scale does not differenti-
ate among roles that are only specific to one or a few particular
vocations (e.g., inventing, founding, and developing roles that
are specific to entrepreneurship). As described in the introduc-
tion, the unidimensional structure of our Work Passion scale
also differs from the Dualistic Model of Passion, which con-
ceives of and focuses on passion as having a harmonious and
an obsessive side (Vallerand & Houlfort, 2003). Here, we instead
focus on representing and measuring the definitional elements
of positive affect, identification, and motivation that people in a
variety of occupations holistically experience when they feel
passionate towards their lines of work.
Study 3: validation in a two-wave study
In this study, we tested the stability, and the (convergent,
divergent, predictive, and incremental) validity of this 10-item
Work Passion scale. Specifically, the goals of this study were: (1)
to examine the stability of the Work Passion scale over an 8-
month period of time, (2) to test the convergent and divergent
validity of the scale with other measures (including optimism,
grit, harmonious passion, obsessive passion, and the search for
meaning), and (3) to test the predictive and incremental validity
of the scale in explaining important work and non-work out-
comes. We first present each of our hypotheses along with their
theoretical rationale, following which we describe how we
tested each hypothesis in this study.
Stability of work passion
In relatively constant work contexts where people do not
change their jobs or vocations, we predicted that people’s
level of passion towards their vocations would remain stable.
Existing passion scales have been shown to be moderately
stable over periods of four to six weeks (Houlfort, Vallerand, &
Laframboise, 2014; Rousseau, Vallerand, Ratelle, Mageau, &
Provencher, 2002), and also over longer periods of time across
months (Cardon et al., 2013; Collewaert, Anseel, Crommelinck,
De Beuckelaer, & Vermeire, 2016). However, prior tests of the
long-term stability of passion scales have primarily been
conducted on entrepreneurs (Cardon et al., 2013; Collewaert
et al., 2016) and in domains other than work (e.g., Rousseau et
al., 2002). We investigated how stable people’s experience of
work passion towards their lines of work remained over an 8-
month time period, and we expected generally high stability in
Work Passion scale scores among working adults who
remained in the same job within the same vocation.
Hypothesis 1: People’s passion for their line of work has high
stability over time in vocational contexts that remain relatively
constant.
Convergent and divergent validity
We tested for convergent validity by measuring how much
work passion was related to optimism, grit, harmonious pas-
sion, and obsessive passion; and we tested for divergent valid-
ity by assessing how much work passion was related to
people’s search for meaning.
Optimism
Optimism is defined as a generalized outcome expectancy that
good things will happen to oneself (Scheier & Carver, 1985). It is
a trait that characterizes one’s general outlook on life. High
scores indicate that people tend to expect the best for them-
selves and believe that more good things than bad will happen
to them in the future. We expected work passion to be posi-
tively correlated with optimism, because optimistic people are
more likely to have a stable, positive outlook across different
domains of life, including their work. However, we also distin-
guished work passion from optimism, because work passion
goes beyond positive expectations of the future and a ten-
dency to view work in a positive light. Instead, feeling passio-
nate towards one’s work also means that the work is
considered important and meaningful, and that doing the
work is inherently motivating. Moreover, our measure of work
passion is domain-specific and does not necessarily generalize
to other domains of life, as dispositional optimism does. A
person could be very passionate about their work, but they
may not be as passionate about other activities.
148 P. CHEN ET AL.
Hypothesis 2: Work passion is positively associated with, but
distinct from, trait optimism.
Grit
Another trait that is relevant to, but distinguishable from, pas-
sion is grit – defined as “perseverance and passion for long-
term goals” (Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, & Kelly, 2007).
Grit is characterized by the deliberate and focused persistence
towards future goals that remain consistent over time.
Examples of items that measure grit include: “I finish whatever
I begin” and “I often set a goal but later choose to pursue a
different one” (reverse-scored). A person could score high on
grit because they are focused and not easily distracted from
their long-term work goals, but it does not mean that they
necessarily consider their work central to their identity, nor
does it require that they derive positive affect from working.
Moreover, grit is measured as a context-general trait that is
considered to be relatively stable across time and contexts
(Duckworth et al., 2007; Duckworth & Quinn, 2009), whereas
our measure of work passion is specific to the vocational con-
text. Therefore, work passion and grit are not the same
construct.
However, we expected work passion and grit to be positively
correlated, because both are related to persistence (Cardon &
Kirk, 2013; Duckworth et al., 2007; Vallerand & Houlfort, 2003).
For example, entrepreneurial passion relates to greater entre-
preneurial persistence (Caron & Kirk, 2013), and higher levels of
passion is associated with more sustained, regular engagement
in an activity (Vallerand et al., 2014). In summary, we predicted
that work passion and grit are positively correlated, but not the
same construct.
Hypothesis 3: Work passion is positively associated with, but
distinct from, grit.
Harmonious and obsessive passion
We expected our Work Passion scale to relate positively to each
of the harmonious and obsessive passion subscales of the
Passion Towards Work scale (Vallerand & Houlfort, 2003),
because both subscales have been shown to positively corre-
late with certain definitional elements of passion, including
love and valuation of the activity, considering the activity a
part of one’s identity, and perception that the activity is a
“passion” (Vallerand et al., 2003, Study, p. 1). However, we
expected our Work Passion scale to be distinct from the har-
monious and obsessive passion subscales in some respects: The
harmonious and obsessive passion subscales focus on the
degree to which people balance their work with other aspects
of their lives in a controlled versus uncontrolled manner, which
the Work Passion scale does not measure; however, as afore-
mentioned, the Work Passion scale focuses on measuring the
degree to which people holistically experience what we con-
sider key elements of work passion.
We speculated that the Work Passion scale might be more
highly correlated with harmonious passion than with obses-
sive passion, although we did not have any strong a priori
predictions about the relative magnitude of these relations.
This is because many prior scientific conceptualizations of
passion have tended to place emphasis on more positive,
adaptive manifestations of passion – admittedly to the
neglect of its maladaptive, obsessive side (Baum & Locke,
2004; Cardon et al., 2009b); this view of work passion as a
generally positive experience also resonates with laypeople’s
definitions of the experience, as we found in Study 1. This is
not to say that this rose-tinted view of passion is more accu-
rate. In fact, we do acknowledge that work passion can pos-
sibly manifest in an uncontrollable obsessive manner
(Vallerand et al., 2003). However, differentiating adaptive ver-
sus maladaptive forms of passion is not the focus of our Work
Passion scale.
Hypothesis 4: Working adults’ Work Passion scale scores are
positively related to their harmonious and obsessive passion
scale scores.
Because the Work Passion scale captures parts of the experi-
ence of work passion that the harmonious and obsessive scales
do not measure, we predicted that our Work Passion scale
would offer unique value in predicting some important work-
relevant outcomes, beyond harmonious and obsessive passion.
This is similar to how, even though the harmonious and obses-
sive passion subscales are positively correlated with one
another (e.g., Vallerand et al., 2003, Study 1: r = 0.46, 2007,
Study 1: r = 0.41), each subscale still explains unique variance in
outcomes beyond the other (Vallerand et al., 2003).
Hypothesis 5: Working adults’ Work Passion scale scores explain
unique variance in outcomes over and above harmonious and
obsessive passion.
Search for meaning
Core to our definition of work passion is the subjective mean-
ing that the individual derives from their work. Steger, Frazier,
Oishi, and Kaler (2006) defined the experience of personal
meaning as “the sense made of, and significance felt regard-
ing, the nature of one’s (work).” There are two ways of con-
struing meaning in one’s work: one, experiencing the
presence of meaning inherent in the work; two, an ongoing
search for meaning (Steger et al., 2006). The presence and
search for meaning are often lowly correlated with one
another, to the point that they are generally considered to
be relatively independent (Steger et al., 2006). Since we argue
that work passion includes deriving meaning from one’s work
as key to its definition, we focus here on differentiating our
Work Passion scale from people’s search for meaning.
Therefore, to test for divergent validity, we measured peo-
ple’s self-reported search for meaning. We predicted that
work passion would not be related to one’s ongoing search
for meaning.
Hypothesis 6: Work passion is unrelated to people’s reported
ongoing search for meaning.
Predictive validity
To test the predictive validity of our scale, we chose to focus on
important work-related outcomes of job burnout and career
commitment, and on non-work outcomes of work-home
 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF WORK AND ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
conflict and physical health. Job burnout and career commit-
ment are important outcomes because both of these tend to be
associated with worker well-being, intention to leave, and
actual retention (Aryee & Tan, 1992; Chapman & Green, 1986;
Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001; Shore & Martin, 1989) – each
of which carry important implications for the productivity of
the organization. Moreover, job burnout is also predictive of
employees’ productivity and their effectiveness at work
(Maslach et al., 2001). We chose to focus on people’s self-
reported work-home conflict and their physical health, because
many people value the quality of their domestic lives and
physical health, and also because these outcomes can be
affected by one’s work (e.g., Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985;
Netemeyer, Boles, & McMurrian, 1996; Spector & Jex, 1998; St-
Louis, Carbonneau, & Vallerand, 2016). Next, we describe each
of these outcomes in more detail.
Burnout
Burnout is defined as the combination of exhaustion, loss of
personal efficacy, and cynicism towards one’s work (Maslach et
al., 2001). Burnout is more likely to happen if there is a combi-
nation of unsupportive elements in the work environment and
personal lifestyle, such as the lack of organizational support, a
high workload that feels overwhelming, poor work-life balance,
and unhealthy sleep habits. Prior studies have linked passion
with burnout in vocations like teaching and nursing (Fernet,
Lavigne, Vallerand, & Austin, 2014; Trépanier, Fernet, Austin,
Forest, & Vallerand, 2014; Vallerand et al., 2010). We propose
that higher levels of work passion, as assessed by our scale, will
be associated with less burnout among workers from various
vocations. This is because people who love and find meaning in
their work are more likely to appraise their job (including its
demands and resources) in a positive manner (Lavigne, Forest,
Fernet, & Crevier-Braud, 2014). Moreover, strong identification
with one’s vocation and high motivation to do the work should
help employees stay more resilient in the face of difficulties and
stressors, which cause burnout. Therefore, we predicted that
higher levels of work passion would predict lower levels of
burnout eight months later.
Hypothesis 7: The more passionate people feel towards their line
of work, the lower their levels of job burnout would be eight
months later.
Career commitment
Career commitment is defined as a person’s attitude towards
their vocation (Blau, 1985, 1988), specifically with regards to
their motivation to work in the chosen vocation (Hall, 1971).
Workers’ career commitment has important implications for
employee turnover and workforce stability (Blau, 1988). The
more workers identify with their vocations, associate their
work with positive affect, and feel motivated to engage in
their work, the more likely we might expect them to be com-
mitted to their vocations. In a study of teachers, Crosswell and
Elliott (2004) argued that passion plays a central role in moti-
vating teachers’ commitment to their vocation: “Passion, rather
than merely external rewards or recognition, is seen to be the
essential element that sustains and maintains teachers’ interest
in the job and their willingness to remain in the profession”
149
(p. 9–10). Moreover, work passion is associated with investing
more time and effort in one’s line of work despite challenges or
obstacles – a sign of commitment to one’s career path (Cardon
et al., 2013; Vallerand & Houlfort, 2003; Vallerand et al., 2014,
2007). Therefore, we predicted that the more passionate work-
ing adults feel towards their vocations, the more strongly com-
mitted they would report feeling towards their careers in that
vocation eight months later.
Hypothesis 8: The more passionate people feel towards their line
of work, the more committed they would feel towards their
careers eight months later.
Work-home conflict
Work-home conflict captures the degree to which pressures
from work interfere with one’s domestic life (Bacharach,
Bamberger, & Conley, 1991). Such conflict could come in the
form of time spent working, work strain, or work behaviours that
contradict the types of reactions expected at home (Greenhaus
& Beutell, 1985). Often, stress experienced at work creates nega-
tive emotional spillovers into people’s family lives because work-
ers bring their job-related frustrations, anxiety, and concerns
home with them (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). We would expect
that passionate workers, who experience more positive affect
and fulfilment while working, should have less work strain to
bring home. For example, workers who rate that they love doing
their work, enjoy doing their work, and find their work fulfiling
to a greater extent can be expected to have less negative
emotions spilling over from their work into their family lives.
Thus, we expected a negative association between work passion
and work-home conflict over time.
Granted, it is possible that some passionate workers might
sacrifice their domestic lives for their work, in which case higher
levels of work passion could potentially relate to greater work-
home conflict. However, given our definition of work passion,
we conceive that workers who report higher levels of work
passion will be less prone to the kinds of stress, frustrations,
and anxiety that create conflict at home. We tested this hypoth-
esis in our study.
Hypothesis 9: The more passionate people feel towards their line
of work, the less likely they would be to experience work-home
conflict eight months later.
Health (physical symptoms)
Prolonged or intense stress at work can often affect employees’
health (Danna & Griffin, 1999; Van der Ploeg & Kleber, 2003). In
turn, poor health can affect employees’ performance, atten-
dance, and turnover, which may incur costs for the organization
(Hart & Cooper, 2001; Lofland, Pizzi, & Frick, 2004; Spector & Jex,
1998; Tziner & Birati, 1996). Feeling passionate towards one’s
work may act as a buffer from the negative effects of work
stressors and strains on one’s health. Workers who are more
passionate about their work derive more positive affect from
working, and they get more affirmation and validation from
engaging in their work. Such psychological states tend to facil-
itate psychological well-being and physical health (Brassai,
Piko, & Steger, 2011; Cohen & Pressman, 2006; Steptoe,
Wardle, & Marmot, 2005). In comparison, workers who are less
150 P. CHEN ET AL.
passionate are arguably less buffered from the chronic and
acute stressors at work because they do not have such positive
experiences on-the-job. Therefore, we predict that the more
passionate people feel towards their vocations, the fewer phy-
sical health symptoms they will experience in the long term.
Hypothesis 10: The more passionate people feel towards their line
of work, the fewer the physical symptoms they would report
experiencing eight months later.
Considering all the outcomes measured, one might expect
that work passion would be more strongly related to work
outcomes (job burnout and career commitment), which are
more directly related to people’s experiences and feelings on-
the-job, than to non-work outcomes (work-home conflict and
physical health).
Incremental validity
In addition to predictive validity, we were interested to test the
incremental validity of the Work Passion scale – in other words, the
extent to which the Work Passion scale explained additional
variance in outcomes, beyond related constructs of optimism,
grit, harmonious passion, and obsessive passion. We had similar
predictions of its incremental validity as those of its predictive
validity: That is, people’s Work Passion scale scores would predict
job burnout, career commitment, work-home conflict, and health,
even when controlling for optimism, grit, harmonious passion, and
obsessive passion, along with additional control variables includ-
ing demographic factors and perceived workload.
Participants
We tested Hypotheses 1 to 10 in a two-wave study of full-time
working adults in America. In the first wave, we surveyed work-
ing adults from a range of occupations early in the year and
followed up with them eight months later. We recruited our
sample of adults working in America through Amazon
Mechanical Turk. According to Paolacci, Chandler, and
Ipeirotis (2010), Amazon Mechanical Turk samples of U.S. parti-
cipants tend to be relatively more representative of the U.S.
population than traditional university subject pools; but com-
pared to the general U.S. population, they tend to be slightly
younger, more educated, and they report lower income.
Participants had to fulfill two main criteria to be eligible for
the survey: they had to be at least 18 years of age and working
full-time in America at the time of the survey. Screening ques-
tions placed at the beginning and end of the survey ensured
that only eligible participants’ data were retained for analysis.
Time 1 (T1) survey
A total of 204 eligible adults (60.8% male, 38.2% female, 1.0%
nonresponse, Mage = 37.6 years) completed our surveys. Our
Mechanical Turk participants were racially/ethnically diverse:
79.4% European American, 6.9% Hispanic and Latino/Latina,
5.9% Asian, 6.4% African American, 0.5% “Other” races, 1.0%
nonresponse. Their average annual income ranged between US
$40,000 and US$49,999. The largest proportion of participants
(43.1%) had at least a Bachelor’s degree. Our participants came
from various lines of work, such as academia, banking, carpen-
try, customer service, engineering, finance, food services,
healthcare, hospitality, information technology, pharmaceuti-
cals, and retail. They had started their lines of work between
1965 to 2014, and 51.2% of them reported starting their lines of
work between 2008 and 2014.
Time 2 (T2) 8-month follow-up survey
Eight months later, 46.6% of our original participants (N = 95,
58.9% male, 41.1% female, Mage = 40.9 years) participated in the
Time 2 follow-up survey. Their demographic breakdown was as
follows: 83.2% European American, 7.4% Hispanic and Latino/
Latina, 3.2% Asian, and 7.4% African American. The mean
annual income range of our T2 sample (US$40,000 and US
$49,999), the largest proportion of whom also had at least a
Bachelor’s degree (54.7%), was comparable to that of the ori-
ginal sample.
Procedure
At each time point, participants filled out approximately 10-
minute online surveys. In both surveys, participants filled out
our 10-item Work Passion scale. At Time 1, they additionally
filled out measures of: optimism (Scheier & Carver, 1985), grit
(Duckworth & Quinn, 2009), the Passion Towards Work scale
containing the harmonious and obsessive subscales (Vallerand
& Houlfort, 2003), and the ongoing search for meaning in their
work (adapted from Steger et al., 2006).
At Time 2, eight months after the first survey, participants
filled out the measures of job burnout (Maslach et al., 2001),
career commitment (adapted from Blau, 1988), work-home
conflict (Bacharach et al., 1991), and their physical health symp-
toms (PSI, Spector & Jex, 1998). We also measured control
variables, including participants’ demographics (gender, age,
annual income, and education level) and their perceived work-
load (Spector & Jex, 1998).
Measures
Dispositional optimism and grit
We used the Life Orientation Test (LOT, Scheier & Carver, 1985)
and the Short-Grit Scale (Grit-S, Duckworth & Quinn, 2009) to
test for optimism and grit, respectively. The Life Orientation
Test for dispositional optimism is a 12-item, 5-point scale that
measures people’s agreement with questions like “In uncertain
times, I usually expect the best.” and “I’m always optimistic
about my future.” Complete scale responses were summed up
into a single index of career commitment. The Short-Grit Scale
comprised items that measured people’s perseverance of effort
(e.g., “I finish whatever I begin.”) and consistency of interest (“I
often set a goal but later choose to pursue a different one.”)
over time. As in prior work (Duckworth & Quinn, 2009), avail-
able scores were averaged to form a grit index per participant.
Harmonious and obsessive forms of passion
Participants filled out Vallerand and Houlfort (2003) Passion
Towards Work scale. The items included: “My work is in har-
mony with the other activities in my life.” (harmonious passion),
and “I cannot live without my work.” (obsessive passion).
 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF WORK AND ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
Participants indicated their answers on 1 (do not agree at all) to
7 (completely agree) scales. Available scores were averaged to
form an index of harmonious passion and an index of obsessive
passion per participant.
Search for meaning
To measure people’s search for meaning in their work, we
adapted Steger et al.’s (2006) meaning in life questionnaire
items for the work domain. For example, our items included:
“I am seeking a purpose or mission for my work.” (Search for
Meaning; SM). Participants answered these on 1 (absolutely
untrue) to 6 (absolutely true) scales. Complete scale responses
were summed up into a single index of search for meaning.
Job burnout
Participants filled out the 16-item Maslach Burnout Inventory
General Survey (MBI-GS: Maslach et al., 2001) that contained
items such as “I feel used up at the end of the work day” and “I
have become less enthusiastic about my work”. Participants
answered these questions on 0 (Never) to 5 (Every day) beha-
viour frequency scales. The job burnout scale was composed of
three subscales, which included exhaustion, cynicism, and effi-
cacy (reverse-coded). We averaged all 16 items into a compo-
site burnout score.
Career commitment
We adapted the career commitment scale (Blau, 1988), which
had been developed specifically for people working in the
newspaper and insurance industries. We slightly modified the
original scale to be more suitable for individuals in a variety of
vocations. For example, the original question “If I could go into
a different profession other than the (newspaper or insurance)
profession which paid the same, I would probably take it” was
modified to read “If I could go into a different profession other
than this profession which paid the same, I would probably
take it”. Participants answered the 6 questions using 1 (Strongly
disagree) to 5 (Strongly agree) response scales. Complete scale
responses were summed up into a single index of career
commitment.
Work-home conflict
We measured work-home conflict using Bacharach et al.’s
(1991) work-home conflict scale, which includes items such as
“How often do the demands of work interfere with your home,
family, or social life?” and “How often does the time you spend
at work detract from your family or social life?” Our participants
rated how often these occurred in their lives using 1 (Seldom)
to 4 (Almost always) scales. Available scores were averaged into
an index of work-home conflict per participant.
Physical health
The 12-item Physical Symptoms Inventory (PSI, Spector & Jex,
1998) assessed the frequency of a range of physical ailments
experienced over the past month. The list of symptoms
included headache, trouble sleeping, loss of appetite, fatigue,
and more. Participants indicated how frequently they experi-
enced each of these symptoms on a 1 (Not at all) to 5 (Every
day) scale. Complete scale responses were summed up into a
single index.
151
Control variables
In our incremental validity analyses, we controlled for demo-
graphics variables and people’s perceived workloads, in order
to rule out the possibility that these factors were driving the
relationship between work passion and the outcomes mea-
sured. We measured participants’ demographics, including
their gender, age, annual income, and education level as con-
trol variables. We assessed perceived workload using the 5-item
Quantitative Workload Inventory (QWI; Spector & Jex, 1998; e.
g., “How often does your job require you to work very hard?”,
“How often does your job leave you with little time to get
things done?”). Complete scale responses were summed up
into a single index of perceived workload.
Results
We present our results in the following order: (a) internal con-
sistency (including item-total correlations and internal reliabil-
ity), (b) test-retest reliability, (c) dimensionality, (d) convergent
and divergent validity tests, (e) predictive validity tests, (f)
incremental validity tests, and (g) tests for common method
bias.
Internal consistency of the work passion scale
Our Work Passion scale inter-item correlations were generally
high (see Table 1); item-total correlations ranged between .53
and .88 at Time 1, and between .62 and .88 at Time 2. Overall,
the reliability of the scale was high (Time 1: α = .95; Time 2:
α = .95). Therefore, the Work Passion scale had high internal
consistency.
Test-retest reliability
We assessed the stability of the Work Passion scale across the
eight-month period. Since almost all (98.9%) of our participants
stayed within the same vocation and 96.8% stayed within the
same job during the eight-month period, we could test for test-
retest reliability of the Work Passion scale in relatively constant
vocational contexts. Out of the participants who had taken the
survey at both time points, we found that their self-reported
Work Passion scale scores at Time 1 and Time 2 were highly
correlated, r = .87, p < .001. At Time 1 and Time 2 respectively,
our working adult participants scored an average of 3.29
(SD = .89) and 3.40 (SD = .90) on the 5-point Work Passion
scale. These results suggest that our Work Passion scale has
high stability over time within the same vocational contexts.
Dimensionality
We conducted factor analyses using maximum likelihood with
promax rotation to examine the factor structure of the Work
Passion scale items at each time point. Indeed, a single factor
structure emerged at each time point, with all scale items
loading highly onto one latent factor (Time 1 factor loadings:
.52 – .93; Time 2 factor loadings: .62 – .93; see Table 2).
Confirmatory factor analysis using Stata v13.1 further sup-
ported a single factor structure, showing that a unidimensional
latent “Work Passion” construct fit the data well at both time
points, Time 1 χ2 (35) = 82.04, p < .01, RMSEA = .085, CFI = .971,
SRMR = .032; Time 2 χ2 (35) = 69.31, p < .01, RMSEA = .101,
CFI = .962, SRMR = .040 (Hu & Bentler, 1999). These results
152 P. CHEN ET AL.

replicated the unidimensional structure of the Work Passion
scale that we had found in Study 2.
Convergent and divergent validity tests
We tested convergent validity by assessing the extent to which
our Work Passion scale correlated with conceptually related
measures of optimism, grit, harmonious passion, and obsessive
passion; we tested divergent validity by assessing the correla-
tion between our Work Passion scale and people’s ongoing
search for meaning in their work (Cronbach & Meehl, 1955;
Hinkin, 1998). Table 3 summarizes the Time 1 correlations,
using data from participants who took the survey at both
time points.
People’s work passion was significantly positively related to
their optimism (r = .49, p < .001) and grit (r = .44, p < .001). It was
also highly positively associated with harmonious passion
(r = .85, p < .001), and moderately with obsessive passion
(r = .54, p < .001). We observed that people’s Work Passion
scale scores were more strongly correlated with harmonious
passion than with obsessive passion, Fisher’s z = 4.48, two-
tailed p < .001 (Lee & Preacher, 2013; Steiger, 1980). These
results provide support for the convergent validity of our
scale. In support of the scale’s divergent validity, people’s
work passion was unrelated to their ongoing search for mean-
ing (r = .07, p = .475).
Next, we conducted confirmatory factor analyses (CFA)
using Stata v13.1 to show that, although the Work Passion
scale may be correlated with optimism, grit, harmonious pas-
sion, and obsessive passion, it is still distinguishable from
them (Byrne, 2013). We compared a five-factor model (where
items measuring work passion, optimism, grit, harmonious
passion, and obsessive passion loaded onto 5 separate latent
factors) against a single factor model (where all items loaded
onto one latent factor). Results showed that the five-factor
model (χ2 (655) = 1259.80, RMSEA = .075, CFI = .890,
SRMR = .081) was a better fit to the data than the single factor
model (χ2 (665) = 2956.31, RMSEA = .144, CFI = .581,
SRMR = .147), Δχ2 (10) = 1696.51, p < .05.
For every one of the 4 constructs that were correlated with
work passion, we compared a two-factor model against a single
latent factor model. In every case, the two-factor model provided
a significantly better fit than the one-factor model: optimism, Δχ2
(1, n = 176) = 537.96, p < .001; grit, Δχ2 (1, n = 187) = 490.19,
p < .001; harmonious passion, Δχ2 (1, n = 181) = 197.05, p < .001;
and obsessive passion, Δχ2 (1, n = 178) = 538.76, p < .001. These
CFA results suggest that the Work Passion scale should be
considered a latent construct that is distinguishable from opti-
mism, grit, harmonious passion, and obsessive passion.
To complement our confirmatory factor analyses, we addi-
tionally conducted tests of convergent and divergent validity
according to recommendations by Fornell and Larcker (1981).
For convergent validity testing, we computed the average
variance extracted (AVE) for our Work Passion scale at Time 1
(when we also measured the 5 other variables for convergent
and divergent validity testing; Fornell & Larcker, 1981). The AVE
value, which we computed by taking the average of the
squared factor loadings, was 0.65. This exceeded the recom-
mended criterion of 0.50 (Fornell & Larcker, 1981), suggesting
that that our Work Passion scale is unidimensional and has a
high degree of convergent validity.
To test for divergent validity, we compared the square root
of the AVE for each construct with the correlation between that
construct and others (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). Results showed
that the square root of the AVE of the Work Passion scale (0.81)
was higher than its correlations with all other Time 1 constructs
used in our validity testing, except harmonious passion (see
Table 3 for correlations with Time 1 variables). The square root
of AVE for harmonious passion was 0.85, equivalent to the
magnitude of its correlation with the Work Passion scale.
These results using the Fornell and Larcker (1981) approach
suggest that our Work Passion scale is discriminant from
optimism, grit, obsessive passion, and search for meaning.
The high correlation between our Work Passion scale and
harmonious passion observed here is not entirely surprising,
given that both of these measure a positive, adaptive mani-
festation of passion towards work. Nevertheless, as we
described earlier, these constructs are theoretically distinct.
Moreover, CFA results above showed that a two-factor
model, with Work Passion and harmonious passion items
loading onto their separate latent factors, fit our data better
than a single factor model.
Next, we conducted further CFA analyses to specifically
distinguish among the passion-related items from our Work
Passion scale, the harmonious passion scale, and the obsessive
passion scale; and we subsequently tested for incremental
validity of our Work Passion scale above and beyond harmo-
nious passion. First, we conducted CFA comparing a three-
factor model (with items from the Work Passion, harmonious
passion, and obsessive passion scales loading onto 3 separate
latent factors, respectively) against a single factor model (where

Table 3. Study 3 correlation matrix of work passion and other measures at time 1 and time 2.
Variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
1. Work Passion T1 (.95)
2. Optimism T1 .49** (.92)
3. Grit T1 .44** .54** (.88)
4. Harmonious Passion T1 .85** .39** .36** (.95)
5. Obsessive Passion T1 .54** 0.10 0.11 .61** (.93)
6. Search for Meaning T1 .07 .04 0.12 −.04 .15 (.92)
7. Work Passion T2 .87** .46** .41** .82** .53** −0.05 (.95)
8. Job Burnout T2 −.71** −.48** −.48** −.67** −.22* 0.16 −.78** (.95)
9. Career Commitment T2 .76** .38** .31** .74** .46** −0.11 .84** −.79** (.93)
10. Work-home Conflict T2 −.26* −.11 −.16 −.27** .08 .35** −.27** .53** −.37** (.93)
11. Physical Symptoms T2 −.32** −.41** −.32** −.27** .11 .15 −.31** .55** −.36** .49** (.90)
Items 1 through 8 are measures from Time 1 and labelled “T1”, and items 9 through 13 are measures from Time 2 and labelled “T2.” Time 2 variables were measured
8 months after Time 1. Reliabilities are presented in brackets in the diagonals. Pairwise deletion used in correlation analyses. *p < .05 (two-tailed). **p < .01 (two-tailed).
 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF WORK AND ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
items from all 3 passion-related scales loaded on the same
latent construct). Results showed that the three-factor model
(χ2 (249) = 556.87, RMSEA = .084, CFI = .924, SRMR = .068) was a
better fit to the data than the single factor model (χ2
(252) = 1227.64, RMSEA = .149, CFI = .759, SRMR = .101), Δχ2
(3) = 670.77, p < 0.05. These results showed that the Work
Passion items indeed load onto their own separate scale that
is distinct from harmonious and obsessive passion.
Predictive validity tests
Following Cronbach and Meehl (1955) protocol for testing pre-
dictive validity, we tested for correlations between our Work
Passion scale at Time 1, and outcomes measured at Time 2,
eight months later. Participants’ work passion at Time 1 was
significantly correlated with both their work and non-work
outcomes eight months later at Time 2 (Table 3). The more
work passion participants reported at Time 1, the lower their
levels of job burnout eight months later (r = −.71, p < .001); the
stronger their career commitment eight months later (r = .76,
p < .001); the less frequently they experienced work-home
conflict eight months later (r = −.26, p = .012), and the fewer
physical health symptoms they reported eight months later
(r = −.32, p = .002). These findings support Hypotheses 7–10.
Incremental validity tests
Following criteria recommended by Hunsley and Meyer (2003)
and Cronbach and Gleser (1957) for testing incremental validity,
we conducted stepwise multiple regressions to examine the
incremental validity of our Work Passion scale over and above
control variables (including gender, age, income, education level,
and self-reported workload) and Time 1 measures that were
convergent with our scale (i.e., optimism, grit, harmonious pas-
sion, and obsessive passion). In Step 1, we regressed each of the
Time 2 outcome measures of job burnout, career commitment,
work-home conflict, and physical symptoms separately on the 5
control variables; in Step 2, we included Time 1 related measures
of optimism, grit, harmonious passion, and obsessive passion as
predictors to the model; in Step 3, we added our Work Passion
scale assessed at Time 1 as a predictor to the model.
People’s scores on the Work Passion scale significantly pre-
dicted their levels of job burnout (b = −.63, ΔF = 8.53, ΔR2 = .04,
p = .004) and career commitment (b = 3.92, ΔF = 11.71, ΔR2 = .05,
p = .001) eight months later, over and above the control vari-
ables, optimism, grit, harmonious passion, and obsessive pas-
sion. These findings suggest that our Work Passion scale offers
unique predictive value that is not currently captured by these
other constructs in predicting workers’ job burnout and career
commitment over 8 months – criteria for demonstrating incre-
mental validity (Hunsley & Meyer, 2003). These stepwise multiple
regression results are summarized in Table 4.
Although we expected that our Work Passion scale would also
provide incremental predictive value for people’s non-work out-
comes of work-home conflict and physical symptoms that we
measured, these predictions were not fully supported. Adding
Time 1 Work Passion scores as a predictor to the model in Step 3
did not significantly increase the amount of variance explained
either for self-reported work-home conflict (b = −.14, ΔF = .45,
ΔR2 = .00, p = .502) or physical health (b = −1.53, ΔF = 1.00,
ΔR2 = .01, p = .321) eight months later, above and beyond the
153
5 control variables, optimism, grit, harmonious passion, and obses-
sive passion.
Testing for common method bias
We tested for the presence of possible common method bias
(Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003) following
Williams, Hartman, and Cavazotte (2010) confirmatory factor
analysis marker technique approach. At Time 1, we tested for
the presence of common method bias among our key mea-
sures of work passion, harmonious passion, obsessive passion,
optimism, and grit. We chose people’s self-reported beliefs
about the malleability of personality (Dweck, Chiu, & Hong,
1995) as our marker variable, because it was theoretically unre-
lated to the other latent constructs and it was not expected to
empirically correlate with any of these other latent constructs.
The chi-square difference test comparing the baseline model
and constrained model (which included factor loadings, all
forced to be equal, from the method marker variable to each
of the indicators in the model) was significant, Δχ2 (1) = 68.83,
p < .05, indicating that we should reject the baseline model. The
chi-square difference test suggested that the constrained
model and un-constrained model (where the factor loadings
from the method marker variable to each of the indicators were
freely estimated) were not significantly different, Δχ2
(37) = 29.37, p > .05; therefore we retained the constrained
model. Finally, the chi-square test comparing the constrained
model and restricted model (where factor correlations were
restricted to values obtained in the baseline model) was not
significant, Δχ2 (10) = 1.25, p > .05, indicating that the correla-
tions among the Time 1 variables were not significantly biased
by method effects. Hence, we can infer that any marker variable
effects did not significantly bias our key correlation estimates at
Time 1.
At Time 2, we similarly tested whether the presence of com-
mon method bias affected the correlations among work passion
and our key outcome measures of job burnout, career commit-
ment, work-home conflict, and physical health; we used 3 items
assessing organizational citizenship behaviours (Spector, Bauer,
& Fox, 2010) as our marker variable, as these items were uncor-
related with the substantive scales. None of the chi-square dif-
ference tests of model comparisons were significant: baseline
versus constrained models, Δχ2 (1) = 0.05, p > .05; constrained
versus un-constrained models, Δχ2 (47) = 63.57, p > .05; con-
strained versus restricted models: Δχ2 (9) = 0, p > .05. These
results collectively suggest that common method biases were
unlikely to affect the validity of our results at either Time 1 or
Time 2.
Discussion
Overall, our Study 3 results established the internal consistency,
unidimensionality, stability, and convergent and divergent
validity of our Work Passion scale. Predictive validity tests
showed that, indeed, work passion was correlated with all 4
outcome measures of job burnout, career commitment, work-
home conflict, and physical health eight months later.
Incremental validity tests indicated that work passion did pre-
dict people’s long-term work outcomes of job burnout and
career commitment eight months later, above and beyond
154 P. CHEN ET AL.

Table 4. Results of step-wise multiple regressions of time 2 job burnout and passion. In this study, although the two constructs did not
career commitment outcomes on control variables, optimism, grit, harmonious
passion, obsessive passion, and time 1 work passion scale scores (N = 92).
meet the Fornell and Larcker (1981) criterion for divergence,
confirmatory factor analyses results showed that Work Passion
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3
scale items and items from the harmonious passion scale
Time 1 predictors b SE b SE b SE
indeed loaded onto separate latent factors. Moreover, the
Job Burnout
Gender 0.10 0.28 0.09 0.20 0.09 0.20 Work Passion scale offers unique predictive value when pre-
Age −0.02* 0.01 −0.01 0.01 −0.01 0.01 dicting work outcomes (like job burnout and career commit-
Income −0.15* 0.06 −0.02 0.05 −0.02 0.04 ment), above and beyond harmonious passion. Therefore, we
Education level 0.03 0.14 −0.09 0.11 −0.10 0.10
Workload 0.07** 0.03 0.05* 0.02 0.04* 0.02 have reason to believe that our Work Passion scale offers
Optimism −0.03 0.02 −0.02 0.02 unique value for research on work passion.
Grit −0.28 0.15 −0.23 0.15 On a side note, we observed that harmonious passion and
Harmonious Passion −0.49** 0.08 −0.30** 0.11
Obsessive Passion 0.15 0.08 0.18* 0.08 obsessive passion uniquely predicted long-term job burnout,
Work Passion −0.52* 0.21 controlling for Work Passion scale scores; harmonious passion
Change in R2 0.41 0.03 (but not obsessive passion) also uniquely predicted long-term
F for change in R2 22.35** 6.06*
career commitment, controlling for Work Passion scale scores.
Career Commitment
Gender −0.62 1.59 −0.96 1.11 −1.06 1.06 These results suggest that our earlier arguments that general
Age 0.06 0.06 0.02 0.04 0.02 0.04 work passion, harmonious passion, and obsessive passion do
Income 0.75* 0.33 0.14 0.25 0.11 0.23 not entirely overlap with one another, and there seems to be
Education level 0.06 0.80 0.77 0.57 0.81 0.55
Workload −0.31* 0.15 −0.18 0.11 −0.14 0.10 value in measuring all three constructs when predicting work-
Optimism 0.11 0.10 0.04 0.10 ers’ long-term work outcomes.
Grit −0.02 0.85 −0.47 0.82
Harmonious Passion 2.85** 0.47 1.61* 0.61
Obsessive Passion 0.33 0.46 0.15 0.44 General discussion
Work Passion 3.36** 1.14
Change in R2 0.46 0.04 Passion for work is becoming a more highly valued experience
F for change in R2 24.07** 8.77**
in today’s society (Cardon et al., 2009b; Newport, 2012; Perttula
b: unstandardized regression coefficient; SE, standard error. In the first step, we
regressed each Time 2 dependent variable (i.e., job burnout and career com- & Cardon, 2011; Tucker, 2002; Vallerand & Houlfort, 2003). Yet
mitment) on the control variables. In the second step, we added Time 1 we currently know little about how it is experienced or
optimism, grit, harmonious passion, and obsessive passion as predictors. In achieved (Chen et al., 2015; Perrewé et al., 2014; Perttula &
the third step, we added Time 1 Work Passion as a predictor to the model.
*p < .05; **p < .01. Cardon, 2011). As more working people embrace and pursue
this desired state, it is important that our science comes to
agree upon a consistent definition of work passion, develops
the control variables, optimism, grit, harmonious passion, and a reliable and validated measure to quantify it, and understands
obsessive passion that we measured; however, work passion its implications. To contribute to the progress of research on
did not significantly explain variance in people’s long-term passion for work, we conducted three studies on 858 adults,
work-home conflict or physical health, above and beyond the including working adults from English-speaking Western and
aforementioned scales measured. Asian populations, and a two-wave study of employees across
Work-home conflict and physical health symptoms are out- various professions. We integrated various scientific definitions
comes that tend to be spillover effects that could result from of work passion from separate lines of research on the same
people’s work experiences (Edwards & Rothbard, 2000; Ilies et topic, along with the layperson’s experience on-the-job (Study
al., 2007; Nixon, Mazzola, Bauer, Krueger, & Spector, 2011), 1), to create a 10-item Work Passion scale. We found support for
hence they may not always directly relate to how people feel a unidimensional work passion construct across samples from
about their work. It is plausible that other more proximal two different countries (Study 2). We also demonstrated the
domestic and physical health factors were more strongly and convergent, divergent, predictive and incremental validity of
directly predictive of these long-term non-work outcomes than our Work Passion scale (Study 3).
work passion.
Although our Work Passion scale scores were highly statisti-
cally correlated with harmonious passion scores, we reiterate Implications
that they are conceptually distinct constructs. Our Work Passion This Work Passion scale contributes to the extant literature by
scale measures the psychological processes involved in experi- identifying and assessing key definitional elements of work
encing work passion more generally, whereas the harmonious passion, including positive affect, strong identification, and
passion scale is primarily meant to distinguish a controlled, motivation, that seem to be common across different vocations
well-balanced manifestation of passion from a more obsessive, and cultures. Our definition extends Baum and Locke (2004)
uncontrollable manifestation of passion. Nevertheless, their conceptualization of work passion as comprising only positive
high correlations suggest that scientific and lay people’s view emotional states, by emphasizing that identification, meaning,
of work passion, in general, is similar to a positive, adaptive, and motivation are also core to the experience of work passion.
harmonious experience, more so than an uncontrollable, This research also expands Vallerand et al.’s (2014) definition of
obsessive one. This is consistent with what we observed in work passion as “liking one’s work, valuing it, and spending
Study 1, where most themes that emerged from laypeople’s time and energy in it” (p. 59). Extending research on entrepre-
definitions tended towards a positive interpretation of work neurial passion by Cardon et al. (2009a), (2009b), (2013) and
 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF WORK AND ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
Chen et al. (2009), the Work Passion scale offers a standardized
way of measuring vocational passion across various vocations,
beyond the domain of entrepreneurship, and also across
cultures.
Our findings show that there is value in measuring passion
using the Work Passion scale, in conjunction with the harmo-
nious and obsessive passion scales, to capture a more robust
understanding of not only the type of passion workers experi-
ence, but also the extent of passion. As we found in Study 3, each
scale seems to offer a unique perspective to the measurement of
work passion. For example, all three scales uniquely predicted
long-term job burnout; Work Passion and harmonious passion
(but not obsessive passion) scores uniquely predicted long-term
career commitment. Research examining work passion could use
these 3 scales in a complementary manner, especially when
predicting complex, long-term outcomes, such as how long
people stay within a profession, feelings of burnout, and perfor-
mance, which are often influenced by multiple factors. Such work
would enable us to better understand what these scales share in
common and what each scale can uniquely offer.
Studying work passion matters, not only because passion
benefits individuals, but also because it relates to advantages
for organizations. From the organization’s perspective, losses are
incurred when workers are unproductive at work, when they
take leave of absences (whether for health-related or family-
related reasons), or when uncommitted employees choose to
leave the profession (Hart & Cooper, 2001; Lofland et al., 2004;
Tziner & Birati, 1996). We found that individuals who are passio-
nate about their professions are less likely to experience burnout,
are more committed to their professions, and are less likely to
experience work-home conflict or health issues that often arise
from job stressors – in other words, they are a boon to their
organizations both in terms of productivity and positivity. These
results resonate with many other findings about the benefits of
passion for cognition, psychological well-being, interpersonal
relationships, and even performance at the level of the individual
worker (Vallerand et al., 2014), which are factors that matter for
organizational productivity and culture.
Limitations and future directions
Because we only used internet samples, we do not know how
well these findings generalize beyond our web panel and
Mechanical Turk populations. Moreover, it is possible that our
definition of work passion may be shared only by predomi-
nantly English-speaking societies that are attuned to the
Western notion of passion. Because we have not translated
this scale for use in other languages, we do not know how
well it generalizes to non-English speaking cultures. It is also
plausible that, even when people might share the same defini-
tion of work passion, those from different industries and cul-
tures may not value passion to the same extent or express it the
same way. Future studies could more systematically test these
questions to add to our understanding of what is common in
the experience, expression, and consequences of work passion
across vocations and cultures.
Our studies primarily examined how passionate people felt
towards their vocations and how they felt over time within a
relatively constant vocational setting. This allowed us to test for
155
test-retest reliability of our Work Passion scale, and its relation
over time to relevant thoughts, feelings, and outcomes. We
would like to emphasize that, although we expect passion to
be relatively stable over time in a constant work context, we do
not conceptualize passion as a domain-general personality trait.
A person could be passionate about her work, but does not
necessarily have to be equally passionate about other aspects
of life. We caution against overgeneralizing these results to
people in dramatically changing work contexts, especially
those that entail significant changes to workers’ vocational
roles. For example, the research-loving academic who has just
been promoted to Head of Department may very well find the
profession suddenly much less appealing than before, given
the surge of administrative duties in replacement of research
time. It would be fruitful for future research to examine how
people’s work passion may remain stable or fluctuate over time
in response to changing vocational contexts and roles.
There is a possibility that some of our outcomes could be
predictors of work passion. For example, burnout may reduce
the likelihood for people to experience passion in their work.
Because we only collected measures at two time points in
Study 3 and the constructs were very stable and highly corre-
lated over time, we are not able to test for reverse causality.
Nonetheless, we suspect that the effects may be bidirectional,
which could be an interesting avenue of research worth explor-
ing in the future. Longitudinal panel studies employing mea-
sures at three time points will be valuable in disentangling such
relationships.
Many scientists and lay people seem to have the view that
passion is generally positive and adaptive (e.g., Baum & Locke,
2004; Cardon et al., 2009b; Coleman et al., 2011; Newport, 2012;
Perttula & Cardon, 2011). In capturing what is common among
scientific definitions of passion and the lay person’s experience,
our Work Passion scale may be skewed towards a positive view of
passion, rather than focus on how it might sometimes become
maladaptive. However, there is a substantial literature that high-
lights the antecedents, correlates, and outcomes of a maladaptive,
obsessive manifestation of passion (Vallerand et al., 2003, 2014,
2010). In Study 3, people who reported higher work passion in
general also reported higher levels of obsessive passion, suggest-
ing that those who might be more passionate towards their work
might also be more likely to manifest it in this uncontrollable,
obsessive manner (although the correlation of .54 indicates that
this does not happen all the time). In other words, some people
might feel so motivated, invested, and fulfilled from their work
that they prioritize it at the expense of other parts of their lives.
Obsessively passionate people are driven by a compulsion to
engage in the work in a manner that is often associated with
negative cognitive, affective, and behavioural consequences dur-
ing and after working (Vallerand et al., 2014). It will be worthwhile
for more research to further test how our Work Passion scale
relates to this “darker” side of passion, especially its negative
cognitive, affective, and behavioural consequences, both in the
short-term and long-term.
Conclusion
Work passion is becoming an increasingly relevant and desir-
able experience in people’s professional lives. Our science can
156 P. CHEN ET AL.
benefit from a more consensual scientific definition that also
recognizes the lay experience of work passion, and a valid
measurement tool to assess its experience. In this paper, we
have (a) highlighted the core characteristics`` of work passion
that emerged from our review of previous scientific definitions
and (b) combined theory-driven and inductive approaches to
develop a reliable scale that assesses people’s work passion. We
established the 8-month test-retest reliability of our Work
Passion scale, replicated its unidimensional factor structure
across different work cultures, examined its convergent and
discriminant validity from other constructs, and showed that
it is associated with long-term outcomes that are important to
individuals and their organizations. In doing so, we provide a
practical tool that can be used not only by organizational
psychologists, but also by human resource professionals and
career counsellors for the purposes of personnel assessments
and career advice. We hope that this research will stimulate
further scientific advancements in the study of work passion,
which we believe can potentially bring positive and meaningful
impact to people’s lives.3
Notes
1. The Passion Towards Work Scale and Entrepreneurial Passion mea-
sure are the two most popular measures of work-directed passion to
date. As an aside, there have also been other attempts to measure
work passion, which either involved less validation efforts or which
remain unpublished. These include Baum and Locke (2004) 5-item
trait “passion for work” scale, which has not undergone rigorous
scale validation, and Perttula’s unpublished “Passion for One’s
Work” scale.
2. Welch’s t test was employed to account for unequal variances
between the groups.
3. We did not measure workload at Time 1, so we only present that as a
control variable in our Time 2 outcome analyses.
Author contributions
Chen conceived the idea and carried out the data collection. Chen con-
ducted the analyses with assistance from Lee and feedback from Lim. Chen
wrote the manuscript, with input from Lee and Lim.
Acknowedgement
We are immensely grateful to Ryan Y. Hong for his guidance, and to Qiao
Kang Teo and Delphinna Neo Hui Xuan for their assistance with this
research.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
ORCID
Patricia Chen http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0173-9320
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Appendix
Work Passion (WP) scale Items
Please tell us how you feel about your line of work. Thinking about your line of work . . .

Items Response scale

1. How much would you say you love doing your work? 1 (Not At All) – 5 (Extremely)
2. How often do you feel positively about your work? 1 (Never) – 5 (All of the Time)
3. How important would you say your work is to you? 1 (Not At All) – 5 (Extremely)
4. How often would you say that you wake up in the morning looking forward to working? 1 (Never) – 5 (All of the Time)
5. How much would you say you enjoy doing your work? 1 (Not At All) – 5 (Extremely)
6. How central is your work to who you are? 1 (Not At All) – 5 (Extremely)
7. How much time do you spend thinking about your work because you enjoy it, not because you have to? 1 (Never) – 5 (Most of the Time)
8. How fast does time seem to pass when you are fully engaged in your work? *We are interested in your subjective feeling of 1 (Slows to a Crawl) – 5 (Flies by
how fast time passes. Quickly)
9. To what extent is the work fulfiling to you? 1 (Not At All) – 5 (Extremely)
10. How motivated are you to do a good job at work? 1 (Not At All) – 5 (Extremely)