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"Find Your Passion" is a mantra dictated to everyone from student to retiree to almost anyone looking for happiness.
But according to a forthcoming study from Stanford and Yale-NUS College in Singapore, it's actually a bad tip – in fact, it might make it more difficult for people to understand what they like to do .
Why? The idea of "finding" one's passion implies that people have intrinsic interests that only need to be discovered, and if you can just understand what they are, you will be magically able to kiss, says the study, which will be published in the journal Psychological Science
But people who have this mentality are more likely to give up their new interest when they reach the inevitable dam road, according to the study. Instead, researchers say that true passion develops – being open to a new topic and wanting to put work into it.
Previous studies have focused on people who had a "fixed" or "growth" spirit. asks about the intelligence – that is, if it is believed that the intelligence is fixed (you have it or not) or it can to be cultivated. In this study, researchers examined the differences between people who believe that interests are static and those who believe that they can be developed with time and effort.
They conducted five experiments involving 470 participants. In one, they recruited undergraduates who identified either as "fuzzy" (interested in the arts and humanities) or "techie" (interested in STEM topics). They asked students to read two articles, one on technology and the other on literary criticism – and found those who had a fixed mindset about interests less open to the article that was coming out of their area of interest.
Students viewed a video about black holes and the origin of the universe, which was the most fascinating. But when asked to read a more dense scientific article on the same topic, students with a fixed state of mind lost interest more quickly than those who believed that interests could to be cultivated
. they are at some point in their life when they are bombarded with the idea that you have to go out and find your passion, "said Paul O. Keefe, an assistant professor of psychology at Yale-NUS College and the 39, main author of the paper. "They may be waiting for this trigger to arrive -" Oh yeah, that's my interest after all " – compared, "Maybe I will follow this class of astronomy, even if it sounds hard."
Carol Dweck, psychologist at Stanford a co-author of the study (and a pioneer in earlier research on the theories of fixed intelligence against growth), said his undergraduate students "first of all, the idea of finding their passion, but with time "
If finding a call in yourself seems too vague, here's a more concrete incentive: Developing a range of interests can also increase your grades and predict future success.
because focusing too narrowly on one type of interest can ensure that people fail to develop knowledge in other areas that could help them succeed in their field, said O & # Keefe
. rk more deeply and with more enthusiasm, resulting in better learning, "he said." And if (they) are more open to things outside of their previous interests, then they might see more of connections between what they learn and what other things are. "
In a world that becomes more interdisciplinary, the future will belong to those who cultivate passions in various fields, such as science and technology. the humanities, said O & # 39; Keefe.
"That's what Steve Jobs was doing – he was not just making a computer; he made a computer that was a work of art. 39, art. "
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