The last 20 years or so has seen an explosion of research in positive psychology (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000), or the study of the factors that make life more fulfilling. One such factor is the concept of passion. Passion is defined as a strong inclination toward an activity that people like (or even love), find important, in which they invest time and energy, and that is part of identity (Vallerand, 2015). Indeed passion can fuel motivation, enhance wellbeing, and provide meaning in everyday life. However, passion can also arouse negative emotions, lead to inflexible persistence, and interfere with achieving a balanced, successful life. This is the duality of passion (Vallerand, 2015).

Vallerand et al. (2003) opened up the scientific field of passion when they published their article on the Dualistic model of passion (DMP) and a series of studies supporting it. Since then, hundreds of studies have been conducted and have supported the DMP. This model posits the existence of two types of passion: harmonious and obsessive. Harmonious passion (HP) originates from an autonomous internalization of the activity in identity and leads people to choose to engage in the activity that they love. It mainly leads to adaptive processes such as flow (i.e., a complete absorption of oneself in what one’s doing; Csikszentmihalyi, 1988), mastery goals (i.e., personal improvement goals; Elliot and Church, 1997), and task coping (i.e., problem-focused strategies altering a situation; Lazarus and Folkman, 1984). It also leads to adaptive outcomes such as positive emotions, subjective vitality, and wellbeing (for reviews, see Curran et al., 2015; Vallerand, 2015; Vallerand and Houlfort, 2019; Pollack et al., 2020). Conversely, obsessive passion (OP) originates from a controlled internalization in identity and leads people to experience an uncontrollable urge to engage in the activity that they love. It predicts less adaptive processes (Vallerand, 2015) such as avoidance goals (i.e., avoiding being worse than others; Elliot and Church, 1997), avoidance coping (i.e., behavioral and psychological withdrawal from a situation; Kowalski and Crocker, 2001), ego-involvement (e.g., self-esteem as contingent on one’s performance; Mageau et al., 2011), and less adaptive outcomes such as negative emotions and lower wellbeing (Vallerand, 2015).

Of particular interest for this study, research reveals that HP is positively related to challenge appraisals, while OP is positively associated with threat appraisals (e.g., Schellenberg et al., 2013; Schellenberg and Bailis, 2016; Lavoie et al., 2021). Challenge and threat appraisals are considered as two different constructs on two different continua (i.e., low to high challenge and low to high threat; Seery, 2013). According to the Transactional Model of Stress (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984), challenge appraisals occur when perceived coping resources match or exceed the perceived situational demands (Seery, 2011). The situation is then seen as an opportunity for gain or growth (Lazarus and Folkman, 1987). Challenge appraisals are positively related to positive emotions (e.g., Skinner and Brewer, 2002; Lavoie et al., 2021), vitality (i.e., feeling energized; Ryan and Frederick, 1997; Brown et al., 2017), and adaptive physiological responses (Tomaka et al., 1993) such as increases in cardiac output (CO; i.e., volume of blood in liters expelled from the heart per minute; Frings et al., 2012) and decreases in total peripheral resistance (TPR; i.e., the resistance to blood flow from all the circulatory system; Larkin and Cavanagh, 2016). On the other hand, threat appraisals occur when evaluated demands exceed one’s perceived coping resources (Seery, 2011). The individual then anticipates losses, and little or no gain (Lazarus and Folkman, 1987). Threat appraisals are positively related to negative emotions (e.g., Skinner and Brewer, 2002; Lavoie et al., 2021), negatively related to vitality (Brown et al., 2017), and they are associated with little change or minor decreases in CO, and little change or small increases in TPR (Tomaka et al., 1993). It is to be noted that task engagement no matter the type of cognitive appraisals, is associated with increases from baseline in heart rate (HR; i.e., the number of heart beats per minute; Seery, 2011).

Research on passion, just like the field of positive psychology, has generally focused on self-report measures. Although passion research has also used objective measures of performance and informant reports of other people’s wellbeing (e.g., Vallerand et al., 2007, 2008; Carbonneau and Vallerand, 2016), no research so far has looked at the role of passion in physiological responses. Looking at such responses would represent an important new direction for passion research that would bolster current findings and open up a window into new unchartered territories such as cardiovascular health. Research in positive psychology has recently started to look at physiological measures. For instance, research has started to look at the link between positive psychology variables such as gratitude (Enko et al., 2021) and emotions (Kaczmarek et al., 2021) and cardiovascular responses. Such efforts in positive psychology are important. However, the above studies did not include passion. Such research must be pursued in order to further extend the field of passion and positive psychology.

In line with the above, the goal of the present study was to extend past research on the role of HP and OP in self-reports of challenge/threat appraisals, positive and negative emotions, and subjective wellbeing by also assessing physiological measures such as cardiovascular reactivity (Blascovich, 2013). Further, we assessed these physiological measures both while participants engaged in a task related to their passion for academia (an education task) and in a control task (a novel leisure task). In line with past research (e.g., Lavoie et al., 2021) and the DMP (Vallerand, 2010, 2015), an integrated model was tested in which it was hypothesized that HP should foster adaptive cognitive responses of challenge appraisals, while OP should be positively related to cognitive threat appraisals. In turn, challenge appraisals should positively predict positive emotions and subjective wellbeing. Furthermore, in line with previous research (Tomaka et al., 1993), only challenge appraisals should predict challenge (adaptive) cardiovascular responses while engaging in the education task (task related to participants’ passion for academia), but less so with the leisure task (task unrelated to participants’ passion for academia). On the other hand, threat appraisals were expected to be positively related to negative emotions, but negatively related to wellbeing.

Overall, the results of the present study lead to at least three major conclusions. First, these findings replicated past research on the role of HP and OP in leading, respectively, to positive and negative emotions (see Curran et al., 2015; Vallerand, 2015 for reviews). They also replicated the mediating role of challenge and threat appraisals, respectively, in the HP-positive emotions and OP-negative emotions relationships (Lavoie et al., 2021). Thus, the type of passion (HP or OP) does matter as pertains to emotions and determines the outlook that one holds in the situation (challenge vs. threat) and the type of emotions that ensue. Of additional interest, this analysis also applies to a measure of wellbeing, namely situational vitality. HP positively predicted situational vitality, both directly and indirectly through challenge appraisals, while OP negatively predicted situational vitality through threat appraisals.

A second conclusion is that cognitive appraisals were found to also predict cardiovascular reactivity. Specifically, challenge appraisals led to adaptive cardiovascular indices whereas threat appraisals were not related to such physiological measures. In addition, the present findings suggest that HP creates the onset of adaptive psychological and physiological responses whereas the responses are less adaptive with OP. Furthermore, as hypothesized such effects seem to be stronger on the task related to participants’ passion for academia (education task) than on the other task (leisure task). These are the first findings to show that passion (and especially HP) can influence physiological measures through its relationship with cognitive appraisals. Future research is needed to clarify the role of OP in physiological responses. Future research is also necessary to see if the physiological effects found in this study can be replicated in other achievement-oriented life domains such as work, sports, and music and the arts.

A final conclusion pertains to the field of positive psychology. Most studies in the field have relied on self-report measures (see Kim et al., 2018). Although such scales are useful, especially when valid and reliable, it nevertheless remains that the use of objective indicators is important to solidify a field that has largely relied on self-report measures. Some research in positive psychology has recently started to use physiological measures (e.g., Cousin et al., 2020). However, the present research is the first to show correspondence between passion and cardiovascular reactivity measures, thereby extending the field of passion and positive psychology in new and exciting directions. For instance, research has shown that using one’s strengths at work leads to HP for work that in turn facilitates increased performance and psychological wellbeing (Dubreuil et al., 2014). Is it possible that using one’s strengths opens up a path of challenge rather than threat, thereby facilitating adaptive cardiovascular responses as well? Future research along this path is clearly encouraged.

This research has some limitations. First, the sample size was limited and no control variables were used. Therefore, future research should be conducted with a higher number of participants and with covariates to identify more precisely the role of passion and cognitive appraisals in participants’ psychological and physiological responses. Secondly, although the physiological measures suggested that the education task was more stressful than the leisure task, future research should counterbalance the two tasks. Finally, a different cognitive appraisals scale should be used in future research. Indeed, the cognitive appraisals scale used in this research has theoretical roots that diverge from the work of Lazarus (1991, 1999). As posited by Meijen et al. (2020), a cognitive appraisals scale could be developed in future research to better reflect the components of the Lazarus’ model.

In sum, the present findings suggest that HP creates the onset of adaptive challenge-oriented psychological and physiological responses, which may indicate some resilience as shown by a positive adaptation following a stressful situation (Fletcher and Sarkar, 2013). On the other hand, OP is conducive to threat-oriented and less adaptive responses. Future research along those lines, where the psychological and physiological dimensions are weaved in together, should extend the field of positive psychology in exciting new directions.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Comité Institutionnel d’Éthique de la Recherche Avec des Êtres Humains de l’UQAM. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

RV wrote the Introduction and Discussion sections and worked on the conceptualization of the questionnaire and the final model. VP wrote parts of the Introduction and Discussion sections, also wrote the Methods and Results sections, collected some of the data, analyzed the data, and worked on the conceptualization of the questionnaire and the final model. CR collected and cleaned the data, worked on the conceptualization of the questionnaire, created the research protocol, and set up the physiological measures. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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