When do negative emotions arise in entrepreneurship? A contextualized review of negative affective antecedents

ABSTRACT

Entrepreneurship can provide personal fulfillment but is uniquely poised to also provoke emotional suffering. Scholarly attention on negative moods and emotions (affect) in entrepreneurship has gained momentum, yet reviews to date have focused on the consequences of affect while our understanding of its antecedents remains fragmented. This neglect is concerning as the conditions that trigger negative emotions are consequential to entrepreneurial cognition, behavior, and well-being. In the current article, we synthesize the findings of 52 empirical sources that contribute to our knowledge of the antecedents of negative affect during entrepreneurship activity. This results in a framework of entrepreneurs’ negative affective antecedents organized by (1) the temporary state of the self, (2) the entrepreneurial occupation, (3) interactions with others, and (4) venture circumstances. Overall, this systematic effort contextualizes affect in entrepreneurship and provides a roadmap for future research that is more closely representative of the diverse lived experiences of entrepreneurs.

KEYWORDS:

• Affect
• emotions
• entrepreneurial affect
• negative emotions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00472778.2022.2026952

Notes

¹ The terms affect, mood, and emotions are used interchangeably as proxies for temporary feeling states. Trait affect is excluded from the umbrella term affect in this review due to its dispositional nature.

² A single article may have explored multiple antecedents or more than one type of mood or emotion.

³ We thank an anonymous reviewer for this insight.

⁴ Articles that did not offer insight on the stimulus of negative affective were excluded.

⁵ We thank an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.