RESEARCH_FILE
Melissa S. Cardon
University of Tennessee
Known for:Empirical research on entrepreneurial passion — showing that the intense positive affect founders feel toward their ventures predicts higher persistence and performance, and also higher emotional volatility, meaning the same intensity that drives founding amplifies the response to negative signals
SEE THE PRACTICE
Turn a thought this research explains into one clear move.
THE THOUGHT
“This week's numbers mean we're dead”
YOUR RECORDED RESPONSE
“This is a flat week, not a fatal one.”
ONE PRIVATE MOVE
Take 8 minutes to copy this week’s main metric into a note, then write three possible non-catastrophic reasons it might be flat. Leave the dashboard closed afterward and return to it later, if you still want to.
Key findings
- 2015
With Christopher Kirk, Cardon found that entrepreneurial passion — intense identity-based affect toward the venture — predicted both higher performance and higher emotional volatility. The finding reframes emotional instability in founders not as a temperament defect but as a predictable consequence of high positive engagement, one that also amplifies the processing of negative signals. Entrepreneurial Passion as Mediator of the Self-Efficacy to Persistence Relationship ↗