Personality, Cognitive Bias and Entrepreneur Decision-making

Abstract

When people talk about the necessary features of being a successful entrepreneur, one of the most important characteristics is the ability to make decisions with limited information. However, the decision-making process is easily influenced by many cognitive biases, especially for entrepreneurs, a group of people normally considered to have different personalities than others. The discussion about personalities has been one of the classical and early approaches to entrepreneurship for nearly a century. Although numerous studies have explored the personality impact on entrepreneurs' decision-making and discussion about cognitive biases are also frequently considered in entrepreneurial studies, there are not so many studies linking these factors together to entrepreneurship decision-making. An amount of entrepreneurial-related literature is used and reviewed in this paper, trying to provide a basic scope of impacts on personalities and cognitive biases to those people interested in entrepreneur decision-making studies. This study found that the influence of personality and cognitive bias on entrepreneurs' decision-making is not completely independent and irrelevant. On the contrary, the two factors are very similar and interdependent. The findings of this article highlight the significance of properly understanding the entrepreneur's personality and cognitive biases in the entrepreneurial decision-making process.