Les passions de l’âme: On obsessive and harmonious passion
Vallerand and colleagues define passion as a strong inclination toward an activity people like, find important and invest time and energy in. They propose two types. Obsessive passion is a controlled internalisation of the activity into identity that creates internal pressure to engage in it, and harmonious passion is an autonomous internalisation that leads people to choose to engage in it. They propose that harmonious passion supports adaptation while obsessive passion brings negative affect and rigid persistence. Four studies with several hundred participants from different populations supported the conceptualisation.
Vallerand and colleagues define passion as a strong inclination toward an activity people like, find important and invest time and energy in. They propose two types. Obsessive passion is a controlled internalisation of the activity into identity that creates internal pressure to engage in it, and harmonious passion is an autonomous internalisation that leads people to choose to engage in it. They propose that harmonious passion supports adaptation while obsessive passion brings negative affect and rigid persistence. Four studies with several hundred participants from different populations supported the conceptualisation.
Written from the abstract as shown on the OpenAlex record, read 2026-11-04.
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doi:10.1037/0022-3514.85.4.756 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.4.756. Study 1 (539 students): conflict with other activities correlated .50 with obsessive and .11 (not significant) with harmonious passion; positive emotions during and after the activity correlated .46 and .43 with harmonious and .02 and .09 with obsessive passion.