Berry interviewed people who were passionate for their work and asked them to indicate how they thought others would evaluate them for giving up on their passion. Then, he created profiles for these workers that described what they did for work and why they were passionate about it. Berry asked a separate group of observers how they would evaluate these individuals if they decided to give up on passion pursuit.
The study revealed observers were far more positive about passion pursuers’ giving up on their current passion than the passion pursuers predicted.
What accounts for this discrepancy? Berry points out the cultural emphasis on passion pursuits begins long before one enters the workforce — in high school, college, and even graduate school. This narrative stresses the importance of commitment and perseverance and the result, according to researchers, is an over-prioritization of persistence that can have harmful effects.
The professor explained Western culture implicitly or explicitly celebrates a worker’s tolerance for difficult working conditions, low income, or major obstacles in the name of long-term success.
Berry and his team believe the media propagates this narrative as well.
“The stories that go viral and that get attention on podcasts are the stories of extraordinary suffering and success through extreme challenges,” Berry explained. “We don’t talk about how some of the challenges that people face are actually just quitting and giving up and changing.”
Not only does this cultural emphasis on persistence discourage people from switching careers, but the narrative also has workplace consequences. The study shows that the more concerned a passion pursuer is about the appearance of “giving up,” the less likely they are to call out bad behavior in the workplace.
“[Subjects] indicated being completely unwilling to speak up if they were exploited or mistreated by a supervisor or by someone else in their department,” Berry explained. “It’s a little disconnected from the giving up, but I think what it goes to is, ‘I’m so concerned with how people are going to view me for giving up, that I’m not willing to engage in behaviors that risk losing [passion pursuit] at all.’”
Shifting this narrative presents a major challenge, but the research team believes the answer could be as simple as promoting awareness about the positive effects of pivoting.
In one of their studies, the assistant professor and his co-authors interviewed teachers who’d seriously considered leaving their line of work in the previous year. The research team asked half of these teachers to learn about the “importance of giving up to pursue other opportunities.” They also shared with this group research that demonstrates the positive effects of quitting in the right circumstances.
Two weeks later, Berry and his team followed up and found that every teacher planned to engage in various behaviors that would support their decision to transition from teaching. The teachers indicated intentions to engage in profession-shifting behaviors, including forming an exit plan and seeking out a career coach.
“Two weeks after we told them about our research, these teachers who had thought about giving up were far more likely than a different sample, who we didn’t tell about our research, to intend on engaging in these sorts of behaviors to support their decision to give up,” Berry said.
Berry hopes research like his allows people to see quitting not as an end to passion pursuit, but as an observer might see it — a new beginning.
“Giving up or quitting is often seen as failure,” Berry said. “I think that people would be a lot better off if they saw quitting as success or as a part of that path forward in success, rather than seeing quitting as a step backwards. It should be seen as a step forward.”
