How Do Emotions Impact the Opportunity Recognition Process?

To understand if emotions help entrepreneurs recognize better opportunities, we extend the
entrepreneurship literature by incorporating current psychology and neuroscience theories
regarding emotions to understand how four types of emotional responses interact with
entrepreneurial cognitive factors to impact the Opportunity Recognition (OR) process.

The OR
process itself is said to be comprised of stages like preparation, incubation, evaluation, insight,
and elaboration. Among these stages the creation of ventures only follows a successful
recognition of an opportunity (evaluation) and decision to develop the opportunity (elaboration).

Using arguments derived from the entrepreneurship literature, cognitive psychology, and
emotions research, this paper specifically depicts the role of emotions and its interaction with
self-efficacy, prior knowledge and experience in the above two main stages of the OR process.
We conclude with a model and associated propositions that show how the four types of
emotional responses impact the two identified OR stages.

Malavika Sundararajan
North Carolina Central University

Full Study: http://sbaer.uca.edu/research/ASBE/2009/p19.pdf