Find your passion? It's bad advice, say the scientists.

"Find your passion" is a mantra dictated to everyone, from students to retirees, to almost anyone looking for happiness.

But according to a forthcoming study from Stanford and Yale-NUS College Singapore, it's actually a bad tip – and can 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 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 roadblock, 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 looked at 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 they found that those who had a fixed mind were less open to the article that was outside their area of ​​interest.

Students were shown a video on black holes and the origin of the universe, which most found fascinating. But when asked to read a more dense scientific article on the same subject, students with a fixed mind lost interest faster than those who believed that interests could 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 happen -" 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 developing you seems too vague, here is a more concrete incentive: Developing a range of interests can also increase your grades and predict future success.

"By focusing too narrowly on one type of interest, one may miss developing knowledge in other areas that might help them succeed in their field," said O & # 39; Keefe

. and more enthusiasm statically, resulting in better learning, "he said. "And if [they] are more open to things outside of their previous interests, then they may see more connections between what they learn and what other things are."

In a world that is becoming more interdisciplinary, the future will belong to those who cultivate passions in various fields, such as science and the humanities, said O & # 39; Keefe.

"That's what Steve Jobs was doing – he not only made a computer, a computer that was a work of art."