Hot-cold empathy gap
A cognitive bias in which people in one emotional or physiological state underestimate how strongly another state will shape preferences and behavior.
State-dependent memory: A memory effect in which information is more accessible when retrieval occurs in the state present during learning. A mismatch between emotional states can make the feelings and preferences of another state hard to recall.
George Loewenstein: An economist whose research examines visceral influences on choice and self-control. His work helped establish the hot-cold empathy gap as a framework for understanding visceral states.
Precommitment: A strategy that restricts future choices to help achieve a goal despite changing motivation or temptation. It protects decisions made in a cool state from predictable changes in motivation.
Empathy gap: A broad difficulty understanding how another person's feelings or circumstances shape their perspective and behavior. The hot-cold version focuses specifically on differences between states within one person.
Visceral factors: Basic bodily drives and sensations, including hunger, thirst, pain, and sexual arousal, that can strongly influence behavior. These sensations can dominate choices while a person underestimates their force from a calmer state.
Hot-cold empathy gap experiment: A study design that compares predictions made in a neutral state with choices made in an emotionally or physiologically aroused state. Experiments of this kind revealed that people misjudge their behavior when hungry, aroused, or in pain.
Ulysses pact: A voluntary arrangement that limits one's future options to prevent choices one expects to regret. It is a vivid form of precommitment for anticipated shifts in judgment or self-control.
False-consensus effect: The tendency to overestimate how widely other people share one's beliefs, preferences, or behaviors. It projects preferences onto other people, whereas the hot-cold gap projects them across one's own states.
Projection bias: A judgment error in which people assume their current preferences or feelings will persist in a different future state. It captures how present preferences are projected onto a future emotional or bodily condition.
Hunger: A physiological drive for food that arises when the body needs nourishment. People who are not hungry often underestimate how much hunger will change their food preferences.