Stewart & Roth 2001 (JAP) — entrepreneurs higher risk propensity than managers; effect concentrated in growth-oriented founders, not lifestyle owner-operators

Claim: Stewart and Roth (2001) meta-analyzed 14 studies and concluded entrepreneurs do show higher risk propensity than corporate managers — with the effect concentrated among growth-oriented entrepreneurs rather than family-income-oriented entrepreneurs. Observed d = 0.31 on objective instruments. The Miner-Raju 2004 reply (using a different instrument, MSCS-Form T) produced d = −0.35 in the opposite direction; Stewart & Roth 2004 sustained their original finding on data-quality grounds.

Source: Stewart, W. H., Jr., & Roth, P. L. (2001). "Risk Propensity Differences between Entrepreneurs and Managers." Journal of Applied Psychology 86(1): 145–153. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11302226/

Confidence: Verified (with caveats — the literature is instrument-sensitive and contested).

For Candid — the operative inference: Most GC owners Candid encounters are owner-operators running stable lifestyle businesses, not growth-oriented founders. The applicable empirical prior is therefore risk-avoidant — consistent with the foundation brief's framing ([[research-brief-psychology-gc-marketing-aversion-may-2026]]). Pitches that assume Silicon-Valley-style growth-orientation will misread the buyer.

Exception: the small subset of growth-oriented founder-GCs (visible in design-build firms, scaling residential operations crossing the $5M-revenue threshold, second-generation owners actively professionalizing) for whom the standard frame fits and to whom strategic-reinvention pitches can land. See [[rule-bird-in-hand-pitch-architecture-default]] for how to segment.