ABSTRACT
Fuelled by a renewed interest for individuals’ roles within the entrepreneurial process (Baron 2004; Gartner 2007; Mitchell et al. 2002, 2004), entrepreneurship research on affect and cognition has exploded in recent years (Cardon et al. 2013; Grégoire et al. 2011a; Mitchell et al. 2011). This interest is hardly surprising. The many challenges entrepreneurs must tackle (high levels of uncertainty; complex tasks; personal engagement and commitment; access/control over limited resources; potential exposure to high stress and strong emotions; liabilities of newness; deficit of legitimacy; temporally distant and varying results; potential for loss and failure (to name a few) are cognitively and emotionally demanding. As a result, it becomes naturally relevant to study what entrepreneurs think and feel (also see Chapters 5 and 8 in this volume) – and the influence this has on entrepreneurial action and outcomes (Baron 2007, 2008; Foo 2011; Stanley 2010; Wood et al. 2012).
