A Potential Pitfall of Passion: Passion is Associated with Performance Overconfidence

Abstract

Having passion is almost universally lauded. People strive to follow their passion at work, and organizations increasingly seek out passionate employees. Supporting the benefits of passion, prior research finds a robust relationship between passion and higher levels of job performance. At the same time, this research also reveals significant variability in the size of the effect. To explain this heterogeneity, we propose that passion is associated with performance overconfidence—inflated views about how well the self is performing—and that this association provides a helpful lens in understanding when passion will be more or less beneficial for performance. A daily diary field study with 829 employees (33,160 observations) and an experiment with 396 participants provide evidence that passion is associated with performance overconfidence. These findings provide a lens through which to discuss when, why, and for whom passion may be more helpful for performance or a potential pitfall.