Are harmonious and obsessive passions distinct?

Abstract

Abstract Passionate activities can be a source of pleasure and meaning. According to the Dualistic Model of Passion (Vallerand et al., 2003) individuals can have either a harmonious or an obsessive passion for an activity. Where harmonious passions provide positive emotional experience, obsessive passions do not. Using Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory (2004), it was hypothesized that harmonious passions could have cognitive benefits. By grouping individuals (N=141, M-age=24 years, 89 women) based on their passion orientation, the roles of selfreported optimism, social desirability, social support, attention, executive functioning, and life quality were examined in distinguishing harmonious and obsessive passion. It was demonstrated that harmoniously passionate individuals differed from the obsessively passionate on all measures of attention, executive functioning, and life quality. Where obsessively passionate individuals reported lower attention, executive functioning, and life quality, harmoniously passionate individuals did not. Individuals who were highly passionate differed from less passionate people on optimism. These differences correspond well to that which would be predicted on the basis of the broaden-and-build theory. Taxometric methods were also used to investigate the latent structure of Vallerand’s Passion questionnaire. Taxometric methods can test whether a construct is categorical (passion being harmonious or obsessive) or dimensional (only varying in degrees of intensity). Results from taxometric analyses (MAMBAC/MAXCOV) are most consistent with the idea that passion exists in a continuum between its harmonious and obsessive forms.