The phenomenally successful are fond of telling us about their passion for their professions.

Consider Steve Jobs: “The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle.” Or Oprah Winfrey: “If you really want to fly, harness your power to your passion. Honour your calling. Everybody has one.” Or Donald Trump: “Without passion, you don’t have energy. Without energy, you have nothing.”

If they are to be believed, passion isn’t only essential for success. It’s essential for happiness.

It is only relatively recently, however, that psychologists have started to test these assumptions.

“Having passion for one’s work is an experience with so much media hype around it,” says Patricia Chen at the National University of Singapore. “Yet we hardly have satisfying answers to the questions: ‘What do I have to do to find my passion? How do I become more passionate about my work? And what does experiencing passion even mean?’”

Chen is one of a handful of researchers who are trying to provide those answers, and their findings should give pause for thought for anyone who is searching for their vocation in life.

The power of passion

Like any emotion, passion can be hard to capture scientifically, though psychologists such as Chen have now devised tools that can roughly measure the experience.

Chen’s Work Passion Scale asks participants to consider 10 questions to explore the extent of someone’s deep interest and enthusiasm for their work.

For example, on a scale of one (not at all) to five (extremely/a lot):

• How often would you say that you wake up in the morning looking forward to working?
• How central is your work to who you are?
• How much time do you spend thinking about your work because you enjoy it, not because you have to?

Such questions were carefully chosen to differentiate passion from other experiences, such as more general “job satisfaction” – which may involve the feeling of being appreciated for the work you do. Or, it may involve the enjoyment of the organisational environment, without necessarily encompassing a strong identification with the job itself – or the motivation and engagement that comes with passion.

As you might expect, people who score more highly on this scale tend to be more committed to their jobs. They are less likely to consider other lines of employment, for example, preferring to stick with their current profession. But Chen’s research also examined many other less obvious consequences, including some potential downsides of passion. You might, after all, suspect that the emotional investment that comes with passion would be draining or come at the expense of family life.

That’s not what Chen found from her scale, however. Over the course of eight months, more passionate employees were less likely to suffer from burnout and reported fewer problems with their physical health. Work passion also seemed to reduce conflict at home: they were less likely to argue with their families over the time they spent at work, for instance – perhaps because they were happier and less stressed in general.

“It could certainly be true that some obsessively passionate individuals would experience greater work-home conflict,” says Chen. “However, when employees are passionate about their work in an adaptive manner, they tend to experience more positive emotions and fulfilment when working, which buffer them from many of the stressors and strain that they might otherwise bring home.”

To find it or cultivate it?

The million-dollar question, of course, is how we should ignite that passion in the first place.

While some people have a clear “calling” from a young age, many leave education without knowing their vocation in life, and may spend their whole careers without having ever discovered a career that truly enthuses them. What can they do?