Hot-cold empathy gap

The idea that emotional states distort our understanding of others is not new. In the work of David Hume and Adam Smith, empathy was seen as central to moral philosophy. Adam Smith observed that we cannot directly access what other people feel unless we project our sensory experience onto others’ situations.^[4][5] This is an early description of the interpersonal empathy gap.

In modern times, standard economic models assume people’s preferences are stable and consistent across different contexts and emotion states.^[6][7] The rational choice theory suggests that agents act to satisfy their long-term preferences.^[4] However, these frameworks cannot explain self-destructive behaviours, such as addiction and impulsivity. By the 1970s, behavioural scientists identified an unaddressed gap between cognition and behaviour in standard economic theory,^[8][9] which Nisbett and Ross^[10] described as the "most serious failing of modern cognitive psychology".

To bridge this gap, George F. Loewenstein established the theoretical framework of the hot-cold empathy gap and further classified the gap along three dimensions: direction, time, and person.^[11][12]

According to Loewenstein, the discrepancies between behaviour and perceived self-interest are largely driven by visceral factors.^[11] Visceral factors are an array of influences which include hunger, thirst, love, sexual arousal, cravings for the drugs one is addicted to, physical pain, and desire for revenge. Visceral factors have two defining features: they feel pleasurable or aversive, and they change the relative desirability between goods and actions in the moment.^[11] Thirst, for example, not only generates negative sensations but also drives an individual to value water more than food.^[13]

These drives have a disproportionate effect on decision making and behavior: the mind, when affected (i.e., in a hot state), tends to ignore all other goals in an effort to placate these influences. These states can lead a person to feel "out of control" and act impulsively.^[14][15][16]

The magnitude of the hot-cold empathy gap depends on the intensity of visceral factors: at low levels of intensity, people are capable of resisting the temptation of visceral drives; at high levels of intensity, visceral drives can be so powerful and often override deliberate decision making.^[11] For instance, when exposed to the feared stimulus, people with phobias typically exhibit intense fear and avoidance behaviours despite knowing that the stimulus is objectively unthreatening.

The overriding power of visceral drives serves an essential evolutionary function. Intense visceral drives narrow attention and motivate individuals to address immediate needs, which enhances the chance of survival (e.g. hunger) and reproduction (e.g. sexual desire). However, this adaptive mechanism becomes problematic in modern contexts where many decisions demand more cold-state thinking.^[12]

Hot-cold empathy gaps can be analyzed according to their direction:^[3]

1. Hot-to-cold: People under the influence of visceral factors (hot state) do not fully grasp how much their behavior and preferences are being driven by their current state; they think instead that these short-term goals reflect their general and long-term preferences. This leads to impulsive decision-making, such as crimes of passion, where people underestimate the extent to which their behaviours are driven by momentary rage and the extent to which rage would cool off once they delay their actions.
2. Cold-to-hot: People in a cold state have difficulty picturing themselves in hot states, minimizing the motivational strength of visceral impulses. This leads to unpreparedness when visceral forces inevitably arise and fewer efforts to self-control. For example, teenagers overestimate their ability to resist addiction, leading to intake of drugs and cigarettes at present.^[12]

They can also be classified in regards to their relation with time (past or future) and whether they occur intra- or inter-personally:^[3]

1. intrapersonal prospective: the inability to effectively predict their own future behavior when in a different state. See also projection bias.^[17] A paradigm example is when hungry shoppers buy too many groceries because they overestimate how much they'll eat later.
2. intrapersonal retrospective: when people recall or try to understand behaviors that happened in a different state. An example is the “morning after syndrome” when people wake up in the morning and fail to relate with the indulgence last night.
3. interpersonal: the attempt to evaluate behaviors or preferences of another person who is in a state different from one's own. Evidence suggests that people who are themselves thirsty tend to wrongly assume others feel thirsty as well.^[13] Loewenstein suggests that people predict other’s feelings and behaviours by simulating their own reaction to that state and then adjusting for differences between themselves and the target.^[12] It is argued that errors in inter-personal perspective-taking mainly arise from errors in self-simulation rather than the adjustment for individual differences.^[18]

Hot-cold empathy gaps have implications across multiple domains, from consumer behaviour, healthcare to judicial proceedings. These gaps create vulnerabilities that can be exploited. For instance, salespeople capitalize on consumers' visceral states. Similarly, interrogators use hunger, thirst, and sleep deprivation to extract information and confessions. Despite exploitative applications, Loewenstein argues that understanding the hot-cold empathy gap is crucial for better policy design. Rather than simply focusing on willpower, more effective approaches use pre-commitment devices that bind cold-state decisions before the hot state arises.^[12]

• Curse of knowledge
• Impact bias
• List of cognitive biases
• Omission bias
• Power (philosophy)#Empathy gap
• Projection bias
• Restraint bias
• Affective forecasting
• Hungry judge effect
• Dual process theory