The findings reported in this section lead to some important conclusions: First, harmonious passion would appear to positively contribute to psychological well-being and to protect against psychological ill-being. Second, obsessive passion would appear to predict psychological ill-being while being either negatively or unrelated to psychological well-being. Third, it appears that being non passionate leads to a small decrease in psychological well-being. Thus, it appears that the same (intentional) activity may or may not contribute to one’s psychological well-being depending on the quality of one’s engagement in the activity. Finally, research reveals that these findings apply to men and women across the life span and on both hedonic and eudaimonic measures of psychological well-being.

Because it entails an optimal form of activity engagement, harmonious passion predicts positive well-being, while obsessive passion and its less adaptive form of defensive engagement does not

If passion affects psychological well-being and ill-being, then what are the processes mediating such effects? Continue reading