Passionate and psychologically-undetached: A moderated-mediated investigation of psychological distress among engaged employees

Abstract

Guided by the effort-recovery model and the dualistic model of passion, we tested a conditional process model that examined the relationships between work engagement, workplace passion, psychological detachment, and psychological distress among Japanese professionals. We conducted an online panel survey across two time points, six weeks apart (N = 202 matched responses) where we measured all the variables at both instances. Findings show that engaged employees become susceptible to psychological distress due to decreased levels of psychological detachment. The moderating role of work passion was partially supported: being obsessively passionate towards work exacerbates this relationship further while contrary to expectations, the moderating role of harmonious passion was not significant. Findings suggest the possibility that engaged employees are less likely to switch off, which predisposes them to ill-being at work, and this becomes apparent among employees with less volitional opportunities in the workplace.