Entrepreneurship, Management, and Cognitive Reflection: A Preregistered Replication Study With Extensions

Abstract

Intuition is a central element of entrepreneurial decision-making. We conceptually replicate a published study by using new representative data from 1961 adults and the widely used Cognitive Reflection Test, which assesses the ability to avoid intuitive decisions and to switch to an analytical process. We extend the analysis by exploring occupational sorting versus environmental influence as mechanisms, the role of overconfidence, and heterogeneity. Our results confirm that entrepreneurs do not resist intuitive (but potentially wrong) decisions as much as hired managers do. Our extensions suggest that this difference is not fully explained by occupational sorting, but partially by overconfidence.