People generally recognize the benefits of responding to failures with self-compassion (i.e., with self-kindness, a sense of common humanity, and mindfulness) rather than self-criticism. In this research, we replicated this effect with passionate students who had all reported that academics was a pursuit that they enjoyed and was important to them, and tested if it was influenced by levels of harmonious passion (a balanced and flexible engagement in academics), and obsessive passion (a rigid and uncontrollable desire to pursue academics). Passionate students (n = 241) reported how they would evaluate themselves (e.g., confident) and the anticipated outcomes that they expected to occur (e.g., goal achievement) if they were to respond to academic difficulties with either self-compassion or self-criticism. Results showed that many of the advantages that students believed self-compassion had over self-criticism, such as enhanced future performance and feelings of confidence and success, disappeared when academic passion involved high levels of obsessive passion and low levels of harmonious passion (i.e., pure obsessive passion). To promote self-compassion in academics, these findings suggest that the benefits of self-compassion need to be emphasized for students with pure obsessive passion.