The Role of Discrete Emotions on Opportunity Evaluation and Exploitation

Abstract

Previous research has shown emotions influence opportunity evaluation and exploitation, but has not examined how the emotions triggered by a business failure influence these judgments. Because entrepreneurs can experience a wide variety of emotional responses to business failure (Byrne & Shepherd, 2015), it is important to understand how emotions influence the likelihood they will continue to pursue entrepreneurship. Here we experimentally manipulate emotions associated with a described business failure in order to test their effects on judgments about a subsequent business opportunity. Consistent with the Affect Infusion Model (Forgas, 1995), we found that experiencing anger as a result of business failure, which is an approach-oriented emotion, increased exploitation tendencies. The findings indicate that discrete emotions trigger motivated processing, which overrides the infusion of affect into judgement.