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    The Pursuit of Passion Propagates Privilege
    20 Jul 2020Working Paper Summaries

    The Pursuit of Passion Propagates Privilege

    by Josephine Tan and Jon M. Jachimowicz
    While graduating students are often exhorted to do work they love to do, those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are less likely to feel that they are a fit for and have the skills to thrive in a job that calls for passion.
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    Author Abstract

    For many graduating college students entering the workforce, “pursue your passion” is not only a frequently repeated graduation mantra but also a commonly embraced ideal. In line with this view, prior academic research finds that passion connotes work-related benefits, including higher job satisfaction and performance. Here, we bring together social psychological, sociological, and organizational perspectives to suggest that the inclination to work in jobs that enable graduating students to pursue their passion differs based on their socioeconomic status (SES): those from lower SES backgrounds view the pursuit of passion as a privilege that excludes them. Across two correlational and experimental studies (N = 510; k = 1,562), we find that students from lower SES backgrounds feel that they are a worse fit for and lack the skills to thrive in jobs that call for passion, i.e., that they perceive the pursuit of passion as a privilege. We next examine whether this belief is accurate from the perspective of recruiters, and—across two additional experimental studies designed to test both overt and covert discrimination (N = 1,005; k = 9,713)—do not find supporting empirical evidence for discrimination against students from lower SES backgrounds in jobs that emphasize the pursuit of passion. These results suggest that the pursuit of passion may serve as an—unintentionally—exclusionary signal to graduating students from lower SES backgrounds, making them less likely to apply, and ultimately less likely to be hired. The pursuit of passion thus reflects a privilege that perpetuates inequalities along socioeconomic lines.


    Paper Information

    • Full Working Paper Text
    • Working Paper Publication Date: June 2020
    • HBS Working Paper Number: HBS Working Paper #20-136
    • Faculty Unit(s): Organizational Behavior
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    Jon M. Jachimowicz
    Jon M. Jachimowicz
    Assistant Professor of Business Administration
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