Follow your passion. It is perhaps the most common advice given
to job seekers. The implication: You can only be your best at work when you’re
doing something you truly love.
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Yet according to a growing body of research, an overemphasis on
passion for one’s work can be detrimental in a number of ways.
“It does not provide an opportunity to develop an identity
outside of work,” said Erin Cech, an associate professor of sociology at the University
of Michigan. “In addition, employers who prioritize passion expect people to
give more time and energy without being paid more.”
The Trouble With Passion: How Searching for Fulfillment at Work Fosters Inequality.
While the idea that a job need not be a calling is not new,
experts said the pandemic and the changes it advanced in the working world
might be encouraging people to rethink what passion for a job really means.
“We’ve been told that you can self-fulfill only through work,
but people are beginning to see there are other aspects of life as important or
more important than work,” said Jae Yun Kim, an assistant professor of business
ethics at the Asper School of Business at the University of Manitoba. “People
are beginning to treat work as work, and that’s a good sign.”
Before the 1970s, passion was not a priority for job seekers,
said Cech, the author of “The Trouble With Passion: How Searching for
Fulfillment at Work Fosters Inequality.” Rather, the focus was on decent pay,
hours, and security, and if there was fulfillment, it came later as you became
more skilled at the job.
But that started changing in the ’70s, with the increasing job
instability of professionals and a growing cultural emphasis on self-expression
and self-satisfaction, a change captured in the wildly popular 1970 book “What
Color Is Your Parachute?”
Notably, worrying about whether your job will fulfill you
applies mostly to the privileged white-collar world. “The majority of people do
not work to self-actualize,” said Simone Stolzoff, who wrote the book “The Good
Enough Job: Reclaiming Life From Work.” “They work to survive.”
It is also important to consider the price you may be paying for
loving your job. An article in The Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, to which Kim contributed, looked at seven studies and a
meta-analysis and found that passion can be used to legitimize “unfair and
demeaning management practices,” including asking employees to work extra hours
without pay, work on weekends and handle unrelated tasks that are not part of
the job.
“I was definitely cut out for teaching,” she said. “But I had to choose between myself and losing myself.” (She was recently promoted at Costco to corporate trainer.)
One of the studies found that managers from various industries
perceived that subordinate who seemed more passionate about their jobs than
their colleagues “would be more likely to volunteer for extra work (for no
extra compensation) and be rewarded by work, and this in turn predicted
increased legitimization of exploiting” that worker.
This doesn’t just apply to individuals, but entire professions,
such as creative or caring fields, where people are presumed to have “a
calling” that can compensate for lower salaries: nursing or teaching, for
example.
Maggie Perkins doesn’t need academic research to understand the
connection between passion for work and exploitation. Perkins, 31, was a middle
school and high school teacher for eight years in Florida and Georgia. Her
public announcement on TikTok that she had quit her job and was happier working
as an entry-level employee at Costco garnered media attention and millions of
views.
Six months later, that sentiment remains. “I fully believe that
the education system rests on exploitation of teacher labor, even in places
with strong unions,” Perkins said, adding that low pay, as well as diminishing
autonomy over her teaching, drove her out of the profession.
“I was definitely cut out for teaching,” she said. “But I had to
choose between myself and losing myself.” (She was recently promoted at Costco
to corporate trainer.)
Choosing a major or a career based on passion can also reinforce
gender stereotypes, said Sapna Cheryan, a professor of psychology at the
University of Washington in Seattle. Several studies she and her colleagues
conducted found that when undergraduates were asked to select majors or
occupations based on the advice “follow your passion” the answers fell into
traditional roles: Men more typically chose computer and engineering fields and
women more often opted for art or helping people, for example.
If instead they were asked to select a career based on job
security and salary or to choose one focused on caring or nurturing others,
this gender difference narrowed significantly, she said. The findings did not
vary based on race or income, Cheryan added.
“I fully believe that the education system rests on exploitation of teacher labor, even in places with strong unions,”
While the intertwining of passion and career does exist in other
countries, it is particularly strong in the United States, experts said, with
its emphasis on individualism, the importance of work and relative lack of
strong labor movements.
One way to determine if it you have tipped over into what Taha
Yasseri, an associate professor of sociology at University College Dublin,
called “obsessive passion” — when your career overshadows all other parts of
your life — is to ask yourself if you’re able to switch off your job and focus
on family, hobbies or other parts of your life. If the answer is no, you may
want to rethink your priorities.
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