Abstract
The present diary study investigates the moderating effect of passion on the relation between activity engagement and daily positive affect. In line with past research (Vallerand et al. 2003, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 756) it is suggested that people with an obsessive passion have more difficulties putting their passion aside to invest themselves in other activities, to a point where they fail to experience positive affect during these activities. A sample of 154 college students reported their daily activity engagement and positive affect over a 2-week period. HLM analyses show that the more people have an obsessive passion the more they experience accentuated decreases in positive affect during days when they do not engage in their passion compared to days when they do. In contrast, harmonious passion predicts daily positive affect on days when people engage in their activity. These results are discussed in light of previous research on passion and positive affect.
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Notes
This rate should be interpreted as a participation rate and not as a response rate because students who received a questionnaire had not previously agreed to participate. Students were met in classrooms during a 5-min period where the first author described the study and distributed questionnaire booklets to all potential participants.
Activity type was coded according to six dichotomous criteria. Each activity was classified as whether or not it gave participants a particular opportunity to (1) experience competence, (2) engage in physical activity, (3) engage in an activity with other people, (4) express their creativity in a piece or project, (5) be active instead of passive, and (6) be in contact with a form of artistic expression.
Activity engagement was coded as such in order for participants’ means to represent positive affect on days when people engaged in their passionate activity.
When the dependent variable is continuous results from HLM analyses are interpreted as non-standardized betas.
Percentage of variance accounted for by a predictor is calculated by comparing unexplained variability before and after adding the predictor to the equation.
With Bernoulli models, gamma coefficients (e.g., γ00) are predicted log-odds that can be converted to a predicted probability with the following formula: φ = 1/1 + e −η, where φ represents the predicted probability and η the predicted log-odd.
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Acknowledgements
This research was facilitated by a doctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) to the first author and funded by grants from SSHRC and the Fonds de Recherche sur la Société et la Culture (FQRSC) to the second author.
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Mageau, G.A., Vallerand, R.J. The moderating effect of passion on the relation between activity engagement and positive affect. Motiv Emot 31, 312–321 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-007-9071-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-007-9071-z