At home, journal in hand, we might enthusiastically map how we’d imagine our day, month, year unfolding. Yet, when we are suddenly deprived of the comfort of our home, when hunger overtakes us, we quickly abandon our noble plans and surrender to our natural savagery.
We wrongly conclude that we have good nature and impeccable stamina when it comes down to controlling our impulses. In reality, we are prone to temptation and easily swayed by our primal instincts. Daily, we have to wrestle with our wicked selves.
Let’s call this naughty part of our consciousness Hotty.
Compared to our other, rational and peaceful part of ourselves, called Coldy. Hotty is short-tempered and crippled by inability to control his impulses.
Or what I’m describing here is what the economist George Loewenstein calls the hot-cold empathy gap.1
The hot-cold empathy gap is one of the most common challenges to self-discipline. It’s when we, in a peaceful moment of our state of being, imagine that we’ll act with great vigor and submit ourselves to worthy deeds.
Yet, when reality unfolds itself, and when the peaceful moment of planning is replaced by real tangible temptations, weariness, and a big fat cake of cravings, our idealistic ambition gets eliminated.
I’m sure you’ve experienced the havoc Hotty can cause over your grandiose goals.
When you make predictions for the future, you tend to be in a calm, cool state where you usually bound yourself to unrealistic commitments. Examples include:
- I will lose 100 pounds.
- I will become a disciplined person.
- I will start a successful business.
- I will quit my bad habits.
- I will become the next mega famous person on YouTube.
However, when the moment to take action arrives, Hotty will typically appear on the scene with a bat in hand and beat the ass of your color coded journal full of dream projects you’ve so passionately planned during a retreat camp with your spiritual teacher.
Or if we can put all of this in one simple paragraph, we can say this: It’s easy to say that you’ll no longer eat junk food when you’re not hungry. However, when your stomach is growling, and it’s the end of a stressful shift, the last thing you’ll remember is the healthy commitment you’ve made on Sunday.
And if you are thinking… “Ah, one more of those fancy psychological concepts that I’ll read and never actually apply in real life. No, thanks! I have other things to worry about – like the tons of new short-videos submitted on TikTok since I last checked 5 minutes ago.”
Sure, I fully get your skepticism, but if I have to be honest, the hot-cold empathy gap is probably the most important concept in the realm of human behavior.
Yes, you’ve read that correctly: the hot-cold empathy is the most important behavioral principle.
If you want to increase your capacity for controlling your urges (and let’s be honest, who doesn’t), understanding the hold-cold empathy gap concept will help you significantly boost your willpower.
What Is Hot-Cold Empathy Gap In Psychology?
The hold-cold empathy gap, or simply referred to as the empathy gap, is a cognitive bias that makes us, humans, unable to adequately consider how impactful impulsive behavior is on our overall decisions and actions.
For instance, we consider planning to be one of our best allies. We’d like to imagine that some day – without specifying when exactly – we’ll make it big. That we’ll lose that extra unnecessary weight we’re carrying and forge a successful life. Yet, despite holding this grand project in our minds that will supposedly put our face on a major magazine cover. We fail to conclude how fragile our willpower is when we are hungry, tired, bored, angry, aroused, or standing in front of a massive project.
Simply put, the empathy gap is the gap between how we think we’ll behave (often when we’re calm and rational) and how we actually behave (usually when we’re in a heightened emotional state, like anger, stress, or temptation). This gap highlights the disconnect between our intentions and actions, especially when influenced by strong emotions or impulses.
The most important aspect of the hot-cold empathy gap is that we are state-dependent creatures.2
In short, this means that when we are calm, we think that it will be quite unlikely to do something stupid like eating three big-sized Burger King meals with extra fries and a milkshake on top. However, when we find ourselves in front of the counter of a fast food restaurant right after a busy day at work and no one to keep us accountable except ourselves, what seemed highly unlikely begins to seem more within the realm of possibilities.
To further add to this, there are two main visceral states we need to be aware of:
- Cold state: In a cold state, we are usually calm, well-rested and our primal needs are somehow satisfied. We feel rather optimistic and have the capacity to apply rational thought. In this clear-headed and logical state, we’d like to imagine that we have a complete grip over our lives and think that future setbacks won’t interrupt our goals in life.
- Hot state: In a hot state, we are either a walking disaster or afflicted with greed and/or temptations. If it’s the former, everything seems hopeless, everybody sucks and annoys us. If it’s the latter, we have a hard time abstaining from short-term pleasures and adhering to our personal core values.
If we can summarize, we can say that: when we are in “cold” state, we fail to realize how eventually entering a “hot” state will influence our decision-making and change our course of action.
What typically determines my state?
I’m glad you asked.
Factors That Influence Our Current State
There are three main factors that influence whether Hotty will take the wheel or Coldy will be the one making decisions. These are:
1. Emotional Arousal
If we currently don’t wrestle with emotions like anger, fear, excitement, or desire, our brain will have the capacity to consider the long-term consequences of an action without being clouded by a thick fog of intense feelings.
However, if we are confronted with the above-mentioned feelings, we will almost certainly disregard the advice from the sage long-term thinker and throw ourselves in a pool of gratifying stimuli that offer immediate rewards.
Picture this: It’s nearly the end of your working day. It’s been going great, but right before you’re about to call it a day, your boss calls you and tells you that you have to redo the whole presentation for tomorrow morning – all the 57 slides.
Of course, the rational part of the brain will whisper to maintain a calm, cool, and collected response. However, the emotional part will probably take over, and you’ll either a) quit your job on the spot because, obviously, this is the perfect moment for life-altering decisions, or b) after staying till midnight updating all the damn slides, because you need the job, you will hit the buy button for the luxury shoes that are only $500 after the discount because you now feel you deserve them.
2. Physiological States
If your stomach feels empty or rumbling, you are experiencing pain, or you are simply plain tired. You’ll likely stick to impulsive decisions that are not particularly beneficial for your long-term growth in life.
You don’t need to watch the movie The Hunger Games to understand what I’m pointing out here.
If you’ve recently heard that intermediate fasting can increase your life span by whatever random number of years the now-trendy online guru is claiming. And more importantly, if you are fasting right now, a colleague celebrating their birthday by treating the entire office with a big, juicy cake can easily sabotage all of your progress.
Simply put, the body’s physiological state has a strong influence over our actions and can easily eliminate our most ambitious intentions.
3. Temporal Proximity to Stimuli
Proximity to something that can bring us short-term pleasure also plays a role in whether we’ll stick with the sane aspect of ourselves or choose to be irrational.
For example, when you are planning your weekly menu in your home, you might conclude that you’ll eat only healthy greens and other wholesome ingredients suggested by the national health organization. Yet, when you go to the store and walk past the junk food aisle, all of your planning can go to the trash just because the glamorous chocolate marvels begin to stare at your face.
Context matters for what we want to achieve with our lives. And not simply context in terms of where we are located. But how we feel – both emotionally and psychologically.
What Is The Effect of The Empathy Gap?
As the online content on self-improvement sporadically accumulates, more and more of us begin to dream about becoming a billionaire astronaut influencer who also adheres to a rigorous dietary regimen. It starts to seem totally feasible to become a member of the local yacht club and bath with rich folks wearing $1783 towels. After all, teenagers seem to make more money than everyone in your familia put together. Why wouldn’t you have the opportunity to make it big yourself, right?
At its core, the main premise related to the hold-cold empathy gap is that you’ll act way differently than what you’ve originally anticipated.
Thus, if you are unaware of how your behavior will shift when the context of your surroundings changes – from cold to hot. You will be forever unable to articulate why your life is close to a total breakdown, despite your best attempts.
You tend to see yourself, first and foremost, as a person taking all the needed actions to practice delayed gratification, remove self-sabotaging habits, and develop self-discipline, but when it is actually time to execute on your perfectly orchestrated plan, you might fall short. The visceral factors mentioned above can restrict you from acting based on your desires.
Why The Hold-Cold Empathy Gap Happens?
Why the hell did our bodies develop such a wicked system?
While in a cold state, we think we can change our lives for the better. Yet, when temptations arise along the way, we self-sabotage ourselves and leave the plan for our hypothetical ascent on our nightstand.
The answer lies in our dual-process type of thinking.
If you’ve read Thinking, Fast and Slow – if you haven’t, you should – you already know that there are two primary modes of thinking:
- System 1: Fast and reckless.
- System 2: Slow and rational.
At first, you might think that System 1 exists to ruin your stay here on planet Earth. Yet, of course, this is not the case. System 1 allows you to act fast when there is danger. This system is responsible for being well-fed, hydrated, and yes, sexually satisfied. It might seem like it’s an outdated system that has no real value in the 21st century, but when a car jumps out of nowhere and threatens to hit you, System 1 kicks in and helps you make snap decisions.
An extra reason for the existence of the hold-cold empathy gap is the prime function of our brain and body. That is, to prioritize feeling good and avoid discomfort.
From a biological and evolutionary standpoint, our brains are designed to ensure survival, which often involves seeking pleasure and relief from discomfort.
For instance, if you are a parent, you might have to regularly hide cookies from your children. But as a working adult who can now afford to shop for groceries, who is going to hide the cookies from you?
It’s perfectly reasonable to think that you’ll commit to your new dietary plan when you’ve just devoured a whole cheesecake. But what will happen an hour later, when you are once again hungry?
Your body and brain are constantly working to maintain homeostasis, a state of internal balance.
When you are not hungry, you’ll consider yourself unstoppable and capable of resisting chocolate temptations. But when work schedules are nearer, or when your spouse acts like a total idiot, again, going to your junk drawer seems like the only way you can keep your sanity.
Plainly, when in a hot state, you are hyper-focused on restoring balance – e.g., handling anger or satisfying a physiological need. And yes, that happens by dismissing the consequences recited by the rational part of the brain and going all-in on short-term temptations.
What Are Examples of The Empathy Gap?
To solidify the hot-cold empathy gap concept, here are three relatable examples:
Example 1: Managing Finances
As you watch a particularly interesting video in relation to saving and investing money, quietly in your mind, you highlight the things you must do to finally reach a more stable financial state.
It all seems to make perfect sense. In such moments of financial education, we feel that we have a solid grip over how we can now distribute our income when our salary hits our bank account.
We feel sure that the money-saving tips we just consumed will be enough to help us resist the witty ads attempting to sell us things we don’t particularly need.
Yet, when we close the resources that just promised to make us wealthy tycoons living on a private island. And, when we meet our friends who start to passionately share their new trivial, yet exceptionally shinny possessions – a new pair of sneakers, a new wristwatch, the newest tech gizmo, etc. – we start to feel unease. We start to want, too, some sort of object that will make us feel that our mediocre existence is not so… well, mediocre.
Thus, instead of doing what we said we were going to do with the little money we have left inside our bank balance – i.e., invest them – we run wild to the nearest store and buy a shelf of whatever in order to satisfy our never-ending appetite for superficial validation.
Example 2: Creativity
As a website owner – correction, as a writer owning a website. I tend to envision my writing sessions as perfectly organized creative moments where I simply sit on my desk and words spontaneously rise to the forefront of my brain – temporary triumphing over the worries that usually dominate my headspace.
During these imaginary states of idyllic flow state, I never check distracting websites, nor do I wish to glance at what other creators are doing. Shopping from random online stores? Never! My focus is firmly on the current topic.
Since I have only around two hours a day for writing, when I think about these sessions beforehand, I imagine that I will be 100 percent committed to the present-day article, and words will magically appear on the screen.
What happens in reality, however, is quite different. I am often totally confused about how I want to begin a sentence or how I want to approach a particular topic. I regularly find myself checking random sites because it’s easier compared to trying to find the perfect word and/or sentence. Occasionally, I even start to compare products I don’t actually need because it’s way more fun than trying to come up with words on a page.
Example 3: Alcohol
When I was around 20, I, like many of my peers, were kind of hooked on the most celebrated duo by society: smoking and drinking. But what differentiated me from my fellows was my desire to stop participating in this strangely considered perfectly normal set of behaviors.
I had a plan. A good plan – or at least I thought.
One day, after a particularly heavy night of drinking, I woke up wrapped in my blanket like a burrito of shame. I had no clue what happened yesterday, but I knew it was bad. Quickly, I started blaming external factors: “Probably I was tired. Or probably the music was too loud”, I thought. Of course, this wasn’t the case. The reality was that when one consumes an entire bottle of scotch, accompanied by a pack of cigarettes and a handful of shots, their brain becomes so socked up by booze that both their rationality and memory fail to function properly.
In short, I got shit drunk again.
So, I wake up, and I decide that I will, “never ever, ever, ever, ever drink again.” I even wrote it in my back-then journal. I even told the same thing to one of my friends, who called me to ask me if I’m alive – like we were survivors of some epic natural disaster.
Strangely, despite my morning commitment to turn to a more reasonable and healthy way of living. When the evening came, I was out with my friends to chat and have something to drink – beer for me, because I was “quitting” alcohol. As one thing led to another, all the fun and goofing around totally eclipsed my earlier desire for a sober way of living. “Oh, it’s so cool to sit and chat with you guys. You know what? Yes, I have said that I’ll stop drinking, but just one drink won’t hurt. We are having so much fun. What can go wrong?” Well, 8 hours and 10 drinks later, my friends were assisting me with unlocking my front door.
Why It’s Important to Understand The Empathy Gap?
As I have hopefully demonstrated by now, the hot-cold empathy gap shows the inconsistency between our rational wants and our primal needs.
Generally speaking, we want to have a stable, always increasing income and a fit body. We imagine ourselves as these rational people who don’t participate in malicious behaviors and are always working on improving themselves – i.e., the 1% better theory.
What happens in reality is that we are secretly wrestling with the irrational part of ourselves.
And yes, this happens like all the time.
We promise to ourselves that we will abstain from all the acts that lead to our evidential downfall – smoking, drinking, gambling, etc. But when we are facing a problem, we are emotional, or when temptations are near, we quickly abandon our idealistic desires and succumb to the quick wins.
Knowing all of this, understanding that you will act differently depending on the situation, gives you a better idea on how to plan for the worst.
If you want to quit a nasty habit, say, smoking. You now know that stating, “I’ll stop buying cigarettes” won’t cut it. You need a strategy when you are starving for nicotine and you’re hanging out with your best friends who all smoke. Sure, at home, in a cold state, you weren’t thinking about cigarettes. But now, oh boy, when everybody around you is holding that majestic stick of tobacco aroma, you start to think: “Is all of this non-smoking behavior really needed?”
Understanding the empathy gap allows you to spot how powerful emotions are. How they can easily destroy your perfectly arranged plan for a prosperous future.
Plainly, instead of hiding our heads in the sand, pretending we are always rational decision-makers. We now should have the capacity to come up with extra strategies for when things get emotional. Ways to act to keep ourselves on the righteous path when our feelings try to steer us away from our long-term goals.
Some Closing Thoughts
When we are well rested. When our primal needs are briefly satisfied. We feel confident that we’ll do what we said we were going to do.
In such situations of emotional delight, we don’t recognize that these moments of great motivation and drive are solely based on a good night’s sleep or the energetic person next to us.
The hot-cold empathy gap highlights the devastating effect our emotional state has on our actions.
Right after a long nap, we can firmly declare that today will be a day of extreme productivity. Yet, when the first roadblock appears and stalls our progress, we’ll probably start to steer towards shopping sites to restore our sense of self-worth.
Or, if sadness has occupied our consciousness, we might declare life not worth living instead of recognizing that we probably urgently need to have a nap and something to eat.
Plainly, our current mood has the capacity to swiftly alter our attitude, as there are different people living in our body. From reasonable and calm when we are rested, to unreasonable and mad when we are tired or emotionally upset.
Yes, you will likely convince yourself that you are all about the long-term game. However, fail to create a strategy when your emotions focus you on inadequate short-term gratification that ends up corrupting your progress.
Wondering what you can do to handle the hold-cold empathy gap condition?
Understanding how your mood tends to alter your behavior is a good starting point.
Since you now know that our rational minds are easily overpowered by emotional impulses, we can be more generous when we make plans for the future. Instead of falsely convincing ourselves that we’ll lose weight, or become financially independent, simply because we have read books on these topics. We can more accurately predict how inconsistent we’ll be while executing our newly formed plan.
Secondly, I’m about to dig further into this topic. Specifically, how to factor in your emotional highs and lows when you plan for the future. This investigation of our ever-shifting moods continues here: How to Overcome the Hot-Cold Empathy Gap.
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Footnotes:
- Loewenstein, G. (2005) ‘Hot-cold empathy gaps and medical decision making.’, Health Psychology, 24(4, Suppl). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-6133.24.4.S49
- Hot-cold empathy gap (2024) Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot-cold_empathy_gap
