Passionately motivated reasoning
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Date
2015-06-19
Authors
Schellenberg, Benjamin
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Abstract
At times, people can confront information that challenges their passions in life. The purpose of this research was to examine how passionate people react when confronted with information that threatens their passion, to determine if these responses were related to levels of harmonious and obsessive passion (Vallerand et al., 2003), and to test two mechanisms that might reduce biased processing. In Study 1, passionate Facebook users indicated their preferences towards a list of article titles, some of which either supported or opposed the use of Facebook. Before reporting their preferences, as a manipulation of self-affirmation, some participants affirmed a self-enhancement value and others affirmed a self-transcendent value. Study 2 was a replication of Study 1, but adopted an experimental design in which passion types were manipulated using a mindset induction. Participants in Study 3 were passionate hockey fans who, after undergoing the same self-affirmation procedure as Study 1, read an article arguing that their fan support contributed to concussions in the National Hockey League. Study 4 replicated Study 3; however, before reading the article, participants completed a task designed to deplete their ability to apply self-control. The results revealed that people’s responses to these messages were predicted by passion type. In each study it was harmonious passion, not obsessive passion, that predicted biased information processing in terms of higher levels of exposure bias (Studies 1 and 2) and skepticism (Studies 3 and 4) towards passion-threatening messages. Affirming an important life value attenuated the positive association between harmonious passion and selective-exposure bias in Study 1, but the positive association between harmonious passion and skepticism was unaffected by prior self-affirmations (Study 3) or ego-depletion (Study 4). Although previous research has identified obsessive passion, and not harmonious passion, as being associated with defensiveness (Vallerand, 2010), the current research demonstrates that in some situations an opposite pattern emerges. This raises the possibility that harmonious passion may be associated with defensiveness when the target of threat is the correctness of one’s decision to engage in a passion, rather than one’s ability or opportunity to pursue a passion-related goal.
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Keywords
Passion, Motivation