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Research Brief: Great Expectations
Assistant Professor Jon Jachimowicz
(Photo by Russ Campbell)
The narrative surrounding employees who are passionate about their jobs holds so much sway in today’s workplace that it has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. “Ultimately, if you believe in a passionate person, they will perform better,” observes Assistant Professor Jon Jachimowicz. “The way we treat other people and the expectations we hold drive how they turn out.”
His findings appear in the paper, “The Passionate Pygmalion Effect: Passionate Employees Attain Better Outcomes in Part Because of More Preferential Treatment by Others,” published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology with coauthors Ke Wang and Erica R. Bailey. (“Pygmalion effect” refers to a psychological phenomenon in which a person performs better when more is expected of them.)
Jachimowicz and his collaborators found that people who are enthusiastic about their work are treated well even when they fall short of their goals, and they may even get credit for performance they haven’t actually achieved. “You can do poorly and still be cut more slack if other people think you’re passionate for your work,” he notes.
The flip side of this experiment worries Jachimowicz deeply, though. Pursuing one’s passion can be a luxury that’s unrealistic for some. “What does it mean if people from higher socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to pursue their passion for work and also more likely to be given more opportunities? It means that we may be selecting people in the workplace that have higher socioeconomic status, and thereby exacerbate underlying inequalities,” Jachimowicz says.
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