Psychology of Entrepreneurship and Innovative Businesses

We investigate whether entrepreneurs differ from other people, either because specific types of people choose such careers, or because they develop an entrepreneurial mindset based on the experiences they have gained during their careers. We analyze personality traits, specific patterns of perception and decision-making, as well as the learning, group, and social behaviors of entrepreneurs, self-employed and innovative people, and traditionally oriented business people, as well as bankers, managers, social activists, and company founders with a strong profit orientation or those with a strong social motivation. An important question is which of these characteristics makes it more difficult or seemingly easier for a person to become a successful entrepreneur.

Selected Publications

Urbig, D., Bönte, W., Schmutzler, J., Curcio, A. F. Z., & Andonova, V. (2021). Diverging associations of dimensions of competitiveness with gender and personality. Personality and Individual Differences, 176, Art. 110775. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2021.110775

Bönte, W., Procher, V. D., Urbig, D., & Voracek, M. (2017). Digit Ratio (2D:4D) Predicts Self-Reported Measures of General Competitiveness, but Not Behavior in Economic Experiments. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2017.00238

Urbig, D., Bönte, W., Procher, V. D., & Lombardo, S. (2020). Entrepreneurs embrace competition: Evidence from a lab-in-the-field study. Small Business Economics, 55(1), 193–214. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-019-00141-0

Huber, C., Dreber, A., Huber, J., Johannesson, M., Kirchler, M., Weitzel, U., Abellán, M., Adayeva, X., Ay, F. C., Barron, K., Berry, Z., Bönte, W., & Holzmeister, F. (2023). Competition and moral behavior: A meta-analysis of forty-five crowd-sourced experimental designs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 120(23). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2215572120