“BATS ARE BLIND?” COGNITIVE BIASES IN RISK PERCEPTION OF ENTREPRENEURS

In general, it could be said that bats are blind but they have high quality senses of smelling and hearing to survive. Similarly, entrepreneurs can look at the business world with different eyes to survive. This affects their cognitive biases in risk perception. The aim of this study was to analyze how entrepreneurs’ cognitive biases affect their opportunity exploitation and risk perception. In this study, we evaluated self-efficacy, locus of control, overconfidence and optimism as dimensions of cognition. Independently of our purpose, results also show entrepreneurs have social capital, such as experience and prior knowledge, which forms their cognitive biases and leads them to perceive less risk when evaluating a new venture idea.