A recent study published in the journal Motivation and Emotion sheds light on a key aspect of happiness: the role of passion and self-regulation in psychological well-being. The findings suggest that the happiest individuals are those who not only immerse themselves passionately in enjoyable activities but also approach less pleasurable tasks, like chores, with a sense of autonomy and self-motivation.
The researchers aimed to explore a fundamental question: Why are some people happier than others? While happiness can be influenced by various factors ranging from biology to social conditions, the researchers focused on how individuals engage in daily activities. They hypothesized that happiness might be linked to how people interact with both enjoyable and less enjoyable aspects of their lives.
The research revolved around several key concepts. Harmonious passion refers to a balanced, flexible engagement in activities that a person loves and values, where the activity fits harmoniously with other aspects of their life. Obsessive passion, on the other hand, is a more rigid and uncontrollable drive to engage in an activity, often tied to external pressures or self-worth.
Self-regulation describes how individuals motivate themselves to perform tasks, especially less enjoyable ones; it can be autonomous, where actions are driven by personal choice and internal values, or controlled, where actions are driven by external pressures or obligations.
“We’ve known for a long time that passion, and especially harmonious passion (not obsessive passion) provides some level to psychological well-being. However, what we didn’t know is if the happiest people in life are those who are surrounded by activities they engage in out of harmonious passion,” said study author Robert J. Vallerand, the Canada Research Chair in Motivational Processes and Optimal Functioning, a professor at the University of Quebec at Montreal, and co-editor of Passion for Work: Theory, Research, and Applications.
“We wanted to see if like past research, the reason why is that engaging in activities that we’re passionate about leads harmoniously passionate people to experience positive emotions in almost everything they do. The answer is yes. However, these people are not ‘crazy’ as they are not passionate for activities that are clearly difficult to be passionate about (chores and duties like cleaning up the room, doing dishes).”
The researchers conducted five studies over several years, involving young adults primarily from the United States and Canada. These studies employed a combination of surveys, daily diaries, and longitudinal methods to assess participants’ levels of passion, self-regulation, emotions, and overall well-being.
In the first study, the researchers sought to examine whether individuals with high levels of psychological well-being (the “happiest people”) experience passion for a greater number of key life activities than those with lower levels of well-being. The sample included 409 young adults who were recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk. Participants completed a survey that assessed their passion for four major life activities: their studies, favorite hobbies, romantic relationships, and friendships. Psychological well-being was measured using a composite of three scales: thriving, life satisfaction, and meaning in life.
The findings revealed that individuals with the highest levels of psychological well-being (the top 25% of the sample) reported being passionate about all four life activities and exhibited significantly higher levels of harmonious passion (a balanced, healthy form of passion) compared to those with lower well-being. Notably, there were no significant differences in obsessive passion (a more rigid, less adaptive form of passion) between the two groups. This suggests that the happiest people are those who are passionately engaged in multiple areas of life in a harmonious way.
Study 2 aimed to replicate and extend the findings of Study 1 by also examining how the happiest people regulate their motivation for less enjoyable activities, such as chores and duties. The sample size for this study was 516 young adults, again recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk. Participants completed the same passion assessments for the four life activities as in Study 1, along with additional measures of their self-regulation for chores and duties. The researchers were interested in whether these individuals were passionate for anything and everything, or if their passion was more selectively applied to enjoyable activities.
The results showed that, similar to Study 1, the happiest individuals were passionate about the four enjoyable activities. However, they were not passionate about chores and duties; instead, they approached these tasks with higher levels of autonomous regulation—meaning they completed these tasks out of a sense of choice and personal responsibility. These findings support the idea that the happiest people are not simply passionate about everything; rather, they selectively apply their passion to enjoyable activities while maintaining a self-determined approach to less enjoyable tasks.
“Something to keep in mind is that in the first two studies we compared the happiest people (highest 25% of the samples) to the rest of the sample and not to the bottom 25%. Thus, this is a very conservative test. The fact that the findings came out so clearly is a testament of the validity of the findings,” Vallerand told PsyPost.
The third study moved beyond self-report surveys to examine the real-time impact of passion and self-regulation on emotions and psychological well-being. The researchers recruited 251 American students from Amazon Mechanical Turk to participate in an online experiment that simulated a typical day in a student’s life. Participants engaged in a series of academic and non-academic tasks, including completing puzzles, reading jokes, emailing friends, and performing a cleaning task. Before and after completing these tasks, participants were asked to report on their current emotions (both positive and negative) and their overall psychological well-being.
The findings indicated that harmonious passion for the enjoyable tasks positively predicted positive emotions, which in turn were associated with higher psychological well-being. Obsessive passion was linked to both positive and negative emotions, but its overall impact on well-being was less favorable compared to harmonious passion. Autonomous regulation for chores was associated with more positive emotions, although its impact was less pronounced than that of passion.
In Study 4, the researchers sought to understand the role of broader personality traits, specifically global motivational orientations, in predicting how people engage in both enjoyable and non-enjoyable activities. Global motivational orientations refer to a person’s general tendency to approach activities in an autonomous way, driven by intrinsic motivation and personal values, or in a controlled way, driven by external demands and pressures.
The sample for this study included 526 young adults, who completed surveys assessing their global motivational orientation (whether they generally approach activities with a sense of autonomy or external control), their passion for the four life activities, and their self-regulation for chores and duties. The researchers also measured participants’ emotions and psychological well-being.
The results showed that individuals with an autonomous global orientation were more likely to exhibit harmonious passion for enjoyable activities and autonomous regulation for chores. Conversely, those with a controlled global orientation were more likely to exhibit obsessive passion and controlled regulation. Harmonious passion was again found to positively predict positive emotions and well-being, while obsessive passion had a weaker and sometimes negative impact.
The final study, Study 5, built on the findings of Study 4 by employing a daily diary and longitudinal design to assess how daily experiences of passion, self-regulation, and emotions contribute to long-term psychological well-being. The study involved 255 young adults who completed baseline assessments of their global orientations, passion for life activities, and self-regulation for chores. Over the next seven days, participants completed daily diaries reporting on their engagement in these activities, their emotions, and their well-being. Six months later, participants were surveyed again to assess changes in their overall psychological well-being.
The findings revealed that daily experiences of harmonious passion and autonomous regulation were associated with more positive emotions and higher daily well-being. Moreover, these daily experiences predicted changes in overall well-being over the six-month period, supporting the idea that daily positive emotions can create a spiraling effect that enhances long-term psychological well-being. In contrast, obsessive passion and controlled regulation were linked to more negative emotions, which undermined well-being.
Vallerand was surprised by the consistency and clarity of the results: “Studies 1 and 2 were very clear as to how the happiest people were much more passionate and harmoniously so from the rest of the participants. Further, the role of positive affect as a mediator between harmonious passion and well-being was found in three studies using different types of designs (controlled, longitudinal and diary studies). Overall, these findings are super clear.”
The findings highlight that “trying to be passionate for at least one thing (and if possible more than one) in life is important and especially if the passion is harmonious in nature,” he explained. “This can be done by both selecting activities that they will be passionate about and by adding some elements in activities that will enhance passion for the activity.”
“By having more than one activity one is passionate about has some added benefits as it prevents people from being obsessive about just one thing. Devoting oneself to several things protects one from obsessive passion and its potential negative effects.”
But the study, like all research, includes some caveats. For instance, it relied heavily on self-report measures, which can be subject to biases. Future studies could benefit from incorporating other forms of data collection, such as observational methods or reports from close friends and family members. Another limitation is the cultural context of the study, as it primarily involved participants from North America.
“We need to replicate the present findings with various cultures,” Vallerand said. “However, because hundreds of studies in various cultures (Russia, China, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Arabic countries, etc.) have yielded results that are similar to those conducted in North America, we feel very confident that they will replicate.”
The study, “Who’s the Happiest and Why? The role of passion and self-regulation in psychological well-being,” was authored by Robert J. Vallerand, Jean-Michel Robichaud, Sonia Rahimi, and Jocelyn J. Bélanger.
