Follow your passion. This advice often given to young people implies that you give the best of yourself at work if you really love what you do.

However, many studies show that this approach does not only have good sides, far from it. “It takes away from people the opportunity to develop an identity outside of work,” says Erin Cech, a sociology professor at the University of Michigan.

In addition, employers who seek passionate people expect them to give more time and energy without being paid more.

However, work is not necessarily a vocation. While this idea isn’t new, the pandemic and its aftermath are causing many to rethink what passion at work really means, experts say.

“We often hear that only work brings fulfillment, but people find that there are other aspects of life as important, if not more important, than work,” says Jae Yun Kim, professor of Business Ethics at the Asper School of Business at the University of Manitoba.

This idea of ​​seeking passion at work was born around 1970. Before, the criteria were salary, schedule and security. Fulfillment came later as you gained skill, says Cech, author of The Trouble With Passion: How Searching for Fulfillment at Work Fosters Inequality. ‘inequality).

The situation changed later in the decade, which brought mobility for professionals and a strong cultural trend valuing self-expression and self-satisfaction. This was the thesis of a very popular book published in 1970, What Color Is Your Parachute.

This yearning for personal fulfillment at work exists especially in the privileged world of white-collar workers, notes workplace expert Simone Stolzoff.

Besides, being “in love with your work” comes at a price. In an article in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology – which reviews seven studies and a meta-analysis – Kim and other researchers find that passion can be used to legitimize “unfair and demeaning management practices.” such as unpaid overtime, weekend work or tasks that are not part of regular work.

According to one of the studies, executives from different industries perceive that subordinates who are more passionate about their work than their co-workers “are more likely to volunteer for additional [unpaid] work and find it gratifying in itself, which , therefore, reinforces the idea that exploiting that worker is legitimate.”

This is true not only for individuals, but for entire professions (nurses, teachers, etc.), which attract empathetic and creative people. It is assumed that their “calling” can compensate for a lower salary.

For Maggie Perkins, 31, it doesn’t take academic research to understand the connection between work passion and exploitation. She taught elementary and high school for eight years in Florida and Georgia. She announced her resignation on TikTok, adding that she is happiest at the bottom of the ladder at Costco. Her post garnered media attention and millions of views. The low salary and the loss of autonomy in teaching pushed her to leave the profession.

Six months later, she hasn’t changed her mind.

“I was made for teaching,” she says. But I had to choose between myself and getting lost. She has just been promoted to trainer at Costco.

Sapna Cheryan, a psychology professor at Seattle University, says choosing a discipline or career based on passion can reinforce stereotypes.

According to several studies she has been involved in, if undergraduate students are asked to choose a major based on their passion, the responses correspond to traditional roles: men prefer computer science and engineering, while women choose more often for art or helping people.

But if they are asked to choose either a career based on job security and salary, or a career focused on care or nurturing, the gender difference blurs significantly, regardless of race or respondents’ income, Cheryan added.

The search for passion at work exists elsewhere, but it is particularly strong in the United States, a country that values ​​individualism and hard work and where the labor movement is relatively weak.

Do you want to know if you’ve slipped into what Taha Yasseri, professor of sociology at University College Dublin, calls “obsessive passion”? Ask yourself if you are able to detach yourself from your work and devote yourself to your family, your hobbies or other aspects of your life. If the answer is negative, your career eclipses all other aspects of your life.

Maybe you should reconsider your priorities.