Passionate workers: A Spanish adaptation of the Passion Scale

In recent years, an increasing amount of research in Psychology and has been concerned with providing a better understanding of what makes people's lives more fulfilling. Although several concepts have been found useful to shedding light on what leads to a better life, 10 years of research have shown that the concept of passion represents one important answer to this question ( Snyder and López, 2009; Vallerand et al., 2003 ). People who wake up in the morning with a smile in their face “because today is football day” or people who work hard for a cause, all have passion that makes their lives worth living.

Passion has been defined as a strong tendency toward an activity that people like, find important, and in which they spend time and energy ( Vallerand et al., 2003 ). Thus, for an activity to represent a passion for people, it has to be significant in their lives, something that they like, and something in which they spend time on a regular basis. It should be noted that the source of passion could be oriented toward an activity (e.g., playing the piano, writing a research article, or working in a project), a person (e.g., one's romantic partner), or an object (e.g., a football card collection) ( Marsh et al., 2013; Vallerand et al., 2003, 2010 ).

Vallerand et al. (2003) proposed a dualistic model of passion with two types of passion, obsessive passion (OP) and harmonious passion (HP). These passions can be distinguished in terms of how the passionate activity is internalized into one's core self or identity. Identity refers to an individual's relevant features, characteristics, and experiences, how these are interrelated, as well as the social and self-regulation s that such features serve ( Schlenker, 1985). According to Vallerand et al. (2003) , certain activities could be so self-defining that they represent central features of one's identity.

On the other hand, internalization represents the process through which individuals transform socially sanctioned values and behaviors into personally endorsed ones ( Deci and Ryan, 2000 ). When the internalization is autonomous, people voluntarily recognize these principles as important, assimilate them into their identity, and, thus, fully accept them as their own. However, when the internalization process is controlled, people are compelled to identify with these principles, and thus behaviors and values may remain external or be only partially internalized in the identity ( Marsh et al., 2013). In the same vein, Vallerand et al. (2003) proposed that those two types of internalization should take place for sources of passion and that these processes should be conducive to HP and OP, respectively.

HP results from an autonomous internalization of the activity into the person's identity. It refers to a strong desire to freely engage in the activity (e.g., work). The passionate activity is self-defining, elicits intrinsic job, and allows individuals to feel in control (Amiot, Vallerand, and Blanchard, 2006; Vallerand et al., 2003 ). Such internalization process occurs in contexts the person willingly accepts his or her passion as important, instead of feeling pressured, either internally or externally, to do so ( Vallerand et al., 2003).

With this type of passion, the activity occupies a significant but no overpowering space in the person's identity and is in harmony with other aspects of the person's life. People with a predominant HP should thus experience positive outcomes not only during (e.g., positive affect, concentration, flow) but also after task engagement (e.g., general positive affect, psychological adjustment, etc.) ( Marsh et al., 2013; Sloan, 2008 ).

Conversely, OP is characterized by a controlled internalization and a contingency-driven engagement process that develops from intra and/or interpersonal pressure (e.g., need for self-esteem or social acceptance), or from the sense of excitement derived from activity engagement, that becomes uncontrollable ( Marsh et al., 2013; Vallerand et al., 2003, 2010 ). Although individuals like the activity, they feel compelled to engage in it because of these internal contingencies that come to control them. Because activity engagement is out of the person's control, it eventually takes disproportionate space in the person's identity and causes conflict with other activities in the person's life ( Vallerand et al., 2003, 2010).

Whether a passion will foster positive affect and healthy persistence depends on whether it is harmonious or obsessive. With respect to affective outcomes, HP should lead to greater positive affect and less negative affect than OP during task engagement. This is because the autonomous internalization of the activity leads the person to engage in the task in a more flexible manner and thus to experience task engagement more fully. Such a flexible form of activity engagement should facilitate better concentration and the experience of positive affect (e.g., job satisfaction), absorption, and flow. Such is not the case for OP, because a controlled internalization breeds an internal compulsion to engage in the activity, leading to a more rigid and conflicted form of task engagement (e.g., workaholism) ( Aziz et al., 2013; Deci and Ryan, 2000; Vallerand et al., 2003, 2010 ).

Furthermore, HP should also contribute to the experience of positive affect and minimize the experience of negative affect after task engagement. This is because with HP people are in control of the activity. They can decide to engage or not in the activity and when. This results in very little conflict between the passionate activity and other activities in the person's life. On the contrary, OP leads the person to engage in the activity even when he or she should not, causing conflict between the passionate activity and participation in other tasks. For instance, the person could feel guilty for having holidays when he or she was supposed to work in the last project for the company ( Marsh et al., 2013).

Empirical findings support this dualistic conceptualization of passion, using the Passion Scale developed by Vallerand et al. (2003) . Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported the two factor structure of the Passion Scale ( Carbonneau et al., 2008; Marsh et al., 2013 ; Schellenberg, Gaudreau, and Crocker, 2013; Vallerand et al., 2003, 2010 ). The Passion Scale has shown high levels of internal consistency as well as predictive, discriminant, construct, and external evidence in diverse activities (e.g., leisure, work, etc.) ( Marsh et al., 2013; Stenseng, 2008; Vallerand et al., 2003, 2010 ). Test-retest correlations over a 3-month period revealed moderately high stability values ( Stenseng, 2008).

Furthermore, results using the scale revealed that both HP and OP were positively correlated with each other and with measures of the perceived value of the passion, of the activity being perceived as a passion, and inclusion of the passion in the person's identity ( Smith, 2008; Stenseng, 2008; Vallerand et al., 2003 ). However, the two types of passion are differentially associated with various outcomes. Overall, empirical research has showed that harmonious passion comprises positive outcomes such as enhanced psychological well-being and positive emotions (Philippe, Vallerand, Houlfort, Lavigne, and Donahue, 2010), flow in the workplace (Lavigne, Forest, and Crevier-Braud, 2012), job satisfaction ( Carbonneau et al., 2008 ; Carpentier, Mageau, and Vallerand, 2012), affective commitment toward work (Forest, Mageau, Sarrazin, and Morin, 2011). This form of passion can also prevent professional burnout (e.g., emotional exhaustion) and conflict with the other life activities ( Carbonneau et al., 2008; Vallerand et al., 2010 ). On the other hand, obsessive passion leads to outcomes such as negative affect over time, rigid persistence, shame, anxiety and burnout ( Carbonneau et al., 2008; Vallerand et al., 2010 ), workaholism (Aziz et al., 2013 ; Del Líbano, Llorens, Salanova, and Schaufeli, 2010), and higher conflict with other life contexts ( Marsh et al., 2013).

Passion can be also considered as a relevant well-being indicator, such as job satisfaction, from the hedonic perspective of well-being (Cifre, Vera, Rodríguez-Sánchez, and Carmen Pastor, 2013). Although environmental sources are highly relevant, well-being also derives from the individual person. According to Warr (2013) , two aspects are important: 1) long-term characteristics, such as dispositional or demographic features, for instance, gender, and 2) an individual's way of attending to and thinking about particular situations as they are experienced. With regard to gender, the results have been inconsistent, as some studies have reported differences between men and women, as others have not found any dissimilarities in emotions ( Cifre et al., 2013; Gyllsensten and Palmer, 2005 ). However, regarding well-being measures that consider any level of activation, such as job satisfaction and work engagement, women usually score higher on anxiety and depression than men. Other studies observed that women showed higher job satisfaction and higher engagement (Cifre, Salanova, and Franco, 2011). Similar differences in gender could be expected as well in relation to passion at work.

In line with the aforementioned studies, passion seems to play a major role in people's well-being and, in the long run, in organizational success and competitive advantage ( Carbonneau et al., 2008; Marsh et al., 2013; Snyder and López, 2009 ). Furthermore, currently there is not a scale adapted into Spanish that measures the passion (harmonious and obsessive) construct, making the study in Spanish-speaking ries impossible. In this sense, the aim of this study is to adapt and validate the Passion Scale into Spanish.

The purpose of this study was to examine the validity and reliability of the Spanish version of the Passion Scale. This scale showed good psychometric properties; factor analysis and Cronbach's alpha coefficients supported the internal validity and the reliability of the instrument. The alpha coefficients of both harmonious and obsessive passion were above .70, and all the corrected correlation coefficients between item score and dimension exceed .30 ( Nunnally and Bersntein, 1995 ). Furthermore, as revealed by the item analysis, the scale and each single item followed a normal distribution. Thus, the 14-item Spanish version of the Passion Scale showed adequate psychometric coefficients, coherent with the studies made by Stenseng (2008), Marsh et al. (2013), and Vallerand et al. (2003, 2010) .

Our results revealed that the bi-dimensionality of the scale was replicated also in the Spanish context. This finding is consistent with the results of several past studies ( Marsh et al., 2013; Stenseng, 2008; Vallerand et al., 2003, 2010 ), supporting this dualistic model of passion. Harmonious passion and obsessive passion can be differentiated in terms of how passion for any kind of activities, including work, has been internalized into one's identity. HP refers to a strong desire to freely engage in work and results from an autonomous internalization of the passion into the person's identity ( Marsh et al., 2013; Vallerand et al., 2003 ). Harmonious passion is related to intrinsic motivation and engagement in the workplace. While this phenomenon leads to the passion becoming part of the person's identity, individuals with an obsessive passion come to develop ego-invested self-structures toward the source of their passion. OP overwhelms other aspects of the person's life, like workaholism and type A personality. Obsessive passion for work and workaholism obsessive-compulsive tendencies associated to excessive working and an incapacity to get satisfaction from other areas of life (e.g., health, leisure activities, etc.) ( Aziz et al., 2013).

The construct validity was also supported by the relationship between passion in the workplace and job satisfaction. Both harmonious and obsessive passion correlated with each other and with job satisfaction, but the relationship between obsessive passion and job satisfaction (intrinsic and extrinsic satisfaction) disappeared when the harmonious passion was statistically controlled. HP showed a stronger relationship with intrinsic job satisfaction than with extrinsic job satisfaction. HP's autonomous internalization leads the person to engage in the task. This process enhances intrinsic job satisfaction because harmonious leads individuals to fully enjoy themselves in their tasks. It would thus appear that involvement in an activity central to one's life (such as working) contributes to one's personal well-being to the extent that harmonious passion underlies such involvement. Conversely, high activity involvement triggered by obsessive passion may not afford similar outcomes ( Carbonneau et al., 2008).

These results are in line with the ones observed by Vallerand and colleagues ( Forest et al., 2011; Philippe et al., 2010; Vallerand et al., 2003 ). Carbonneau et al. (2008) and Carpentier et al. (2012) observed that harmonious passion predicted enhanced job satisfaction and this, in turn, decreased conflict and prevented burnout symptoms over time. These findings provide encouraging evidence for the role of passion in predicting workers’ psychological well-being.

Results using the Passion Scale revealed that both harmonious and obsessive passion were positively correlated with each other and with measures of passion's perceived value ( Marsh et al., 2013; Smith, 2008; Stenseng, 2008 ). However, the two types of passion are differently associated with various outcomes. Harmonious passion is positively related with positive emotions and flow during activity engagement. Employees who experience positive emotions and work engagement tend to express higher levels of job satisfaction and well-being ( Schaufeli and Bakker, 2004; Simpson, 2009; Sloan, 2008 ). On the other hand, obsessive passion is positively related with the experience of conflict between one's passion and with obsessive-compulsive tendencies, like work addiction ( Aziz et al., 2013; Vallerand et al., 2010 Amiot et al., 2006, Del Líbano et al., 2010, Hofstede, 2001, Lavigne et al., 2012, Schellenberg et al., 2013, Seligman et al., 2005 and Warr et al., 1979).

With regard to gender differences, men and women did not any significant differences in the level of passion (both harmonious and obsessive) or in job satisfaction. These results are in line with the ones observed by Cifre et al. (2013); however, Cifre et al. (2011) found that women showed higher job satisfaction and higher engagement. According to Cifre et al. (2013) , the way in which the variable gender has been treated during research and the use of different indicators of well-being associated to emotions might be behind these contradictory results. In this sense, new studies would be necessary to clarify the relationship between gender and emotions, specifically passion at work.

The Spanish version of the Passion Scale is the first instrument that assesses the passion levels in the workplace. Nevertheless, it is important to warn of the study's limitations. It would be positive to conduct additional studies in others samples and organizations (e.g., public versus private companies). We also think it is necessary to conduct further studies employing this instrument and analyzing its relationship with other workplace variables (i.e., workaholism, engagement). Finally, in future studies with Spanish samples, temporal stability should be explored and confirmatory analyses carried out to ratify the model.

To sum up, the Spanish version of the Passion Scale seems to be an accurate instrument for assessing passion for work levels in organizational context, analyzing it in relation to other variables. It is an easy-to-apply tool requiring minimal time to complete, and it could be useful in designing models and strategies for increasing employees’ passion for work levels.

The authors of this article declare no conflict of interest.

This paper was partially financed by FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology (Portugal).