How to Overcome the Hot-Cold Empathy Gap

Remember the last time you felt underappreciated? You probably bought a whole aisle of goods to cheer yourself up. A full box of random, but luxurious items to present yourself in front of others as you are winning in life. What happened one day later? You probably felt guilty about spending your family savings on silly things just to make others admire you. Why did you do it? Because of the hot-cold empathy gap.

We learn, the hard way, that when we are not in pain or experiencing a strong emotion like anger or sadness, it’s very difficult to imagine ourselves in that situation.

Behavioral scientists call this the hot-cold empathy gap.

In other words, we think we’re going to act completely normal when we go out tonight, but we end up somewhere near the dumpster after three sets of tequila shots, followed by “just one more” whiskey, then vodka because “why not?”.

And the best part? When we were preparing to go out, we swore it was just going to be dinner with friends and then back home to… read a self-help book – because we’re all so mature now.

Yeah, right, right?

So, what exactly turns an average Monday into a liquor-fueled bad decision marathon?

Even if you can’t relate to the scenario above – where you end up on the floor of a bar bathroom. I’m sure you can imagine yourself in other weird situations. Like:

• Saying you’ll no longer eat sugar, only to order a cake a couple of hours later.
• Committing to a strict exercise regime only to abandon it a day later.
• Getting a ton of psychology books only to let them collect dust while you play on your console.

When calm and well-rested, we imagine ourselves as these perfectly rational, Zen-like gurus who always make wise decisions. Yet, in a grip of intense feelings, we quickly abandon our noble plans and fully descend into chaos.

The concept of the empathy gap helps to understand this seemingly bipolar behavior. The idea is that our existence constantly bounces between two states:

• Cold state: Rational and clear-headed.
• Hot state: Irrational and mad.

In my article hot-cold empathy gap explained, I’ve described these two phases as two individuals: Coldy and Hotty.

This very piece is essentially part two.

Assuming you already know the gist, we are now going to discuss how we can overcome the hot-cold empathy gap. How we can better predict our impulsivity and prevent ourselves from acting recklessly and doing something we’ll regret – like, I don’t know, adding another pair of overpriced sneakers to your cart while confidently telling yourself, “I deserve this!”

So, how do we prevent this spiral of bad decisions?

The truth is that you can’t completely avoid messing up. You can’t win the battle between the lower self and higher self. You will have moments where “Hotty” will take the wheel and drive you to an all-you-can-eat buffet with no recollection of why you’re there.

But don’t despair!

While we may never fully escape the madness of our impulsive selves, there are ways to reduce the fallout.

Let’s start by first observing the consequences of our ill temper…

Consequences of The Hot-Cold Empathy Gap

Being too emotional sucks. Being unemotional sucks, too. But what sucks the most is our inability to detect the temporary nature of our mental state, which, as it seems, heavily influences our decision-making.

Having said that, there are three types of consequences stemming from the hot-cold empathy gap phenomenon:

1. Hot-to-Cold Empathy Gaps

Picture this: It’s Monday night. After work, you teamed up with a few coworkers to dine out. It’s not like you are partying hard or anything, but it’s fun – you’re joking about your arrogant boss and his favorite lackey, both of whom you made sure not to invite. At some point during the evening, someone on the table throws out an offer: “Let’s go to this new bar!” How do you respond?

Looking through the lens of basic practicality, it will be incredibly foolish of you to agree. The week is just getting started. Your to-do list is jam-packed with tasks and on top of it all, you’ll have to travel for a work conference on Friday.

But do you really think that the logical arguments are enough to ditch the suggestion and head back home in a reasonable hour?

Most probably not.

If half of the people on the table agree to go out, there is a high chance that you will dismiss the sound arguments suggesting going home and ecstatically raise your hand in favor of the bar offer.

That brings us to the hot-to-cold empathy gap case.

The gist here is that you are making a decision on the basis of your, often temporary, yet quite intense current feelings.

Considering the above example, you are essentially in a hot state. You are in a pleasant atmosphere with pleasant people all around. Plainly, you are ecstatic. The joy clouds your thinking and prevents you from considering how bad you will feel the next day if you take the bar offer.

In other words, the moment of decision-making is influenced by strong emotions. However, these strong emotions aren’t constant. They are unlikely to last.

In the above scenario, if you say something like, “I’ll think about going to the bar” and then go outside for a moment alone. You’ll most probably resurrect the logical part of the brain and collect enough convincing proof to make the smart choice – head back home undamaged from alcohol and wake up fresh the next day, free from regret.

2. Cold-to-Hot Empathy Gaps

We can continue with the above example to imagine the reverse state: cold-to-hot empathy gap.

So… right before heading to the restaurant with your coworkers, you set an internal agreement with yourself to return home around 9 p.m. Yet, this inner contract was forged in a rational state. A state absent of alcohol, pleasant chit-chat, dim lights, and lucrative offers for even more fun.

To make the above even more interesting, what if you’re the type of person who can’t say no to alcohol? Surely an offer for even more alcohol – while you drink alcohol – will sound irresistible.

But before all of this, during a calm state, you can’t adequately calculate the intensity of your alcohol craving, except when you are actually feeling it.

In other words, before visiting the place and drinking, you can’t imagine wanting to drink all night – you are in a cold state. But when you are now sipping from the glass, you can’t imagine yourself wanting to stop drinking – when you are in a hot state now.

3. Interpersonal Empathy Gaps

Let’s further add to the above example to illustrate interpersonal empathy gaps…

Imagine that, in the restaurant, one of your coworkers is suddenly overcome by sadness. After a couple of drinks, he starts to open up about his struggling marriage. He becomes so emotional that he bursts into tears. You try to talk him out of ordering a full set of tequila shots only for himself and try to reason him. You say, “Oh, all of this is really terrible. I feel really sorry for you. But that’s no reason to get shit drunk, Mike. Let’s go outside to breathe some fresh air!”

All of this might sound perfectly sound to you, but since you are not depressed yourself, it’s very, very difficult to imagine what your coworker is actually going through.

That’s probably the most famous impact of the hot-cold empathy gap. Our inability to understand other people.

Not that we can’t get a sense of what they are going through. But since our mental state is different from theirs – we are in a cold state while they are in a hot state – we can’t truly understand their feelings.

We might label the behavior of our coworker inappropriate, but that’s because we are not in the same position. We are not in the same emotional state.

Interpersonal empathy gaps suggest that we’ll underappreciate the pain, discomfort, and struggle experienced by others. Hence, we will respond inadequately to their cry for help.

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We now have a better understanding of the consequences of the hot-cold empathy gap.

Here’s a summary of the above three cases:

1. Hot-to-cold empathy gaps: When we’re angry, depressed, starving, or in pain, we can’t imagine ourselves being calm, happy, satisfied, or feeling well. Thus, we are making (often bad) decisions under the influence of powerful emotions.
2. Cold-to-hot empathy gaps: When we’re calm, happy, and well rested, we can’t imagine being so angry or so emotionally overpowered that we could offend someone. Thus, we are not making any plans to defend ourselves against our natural savagery when our peaceful state eventually gets interrupted – which always happens.
3. Interpersonal empathy gaps: When our current state is different from the state of the person next to us, we can’t fully grasp what they are actually going through. Thus, we’ll probably end up disagreeing, or not properly understanding the other party, due to the discrepancy in our emotional states.

We now know the wide-ranging negative effects of the hot-cold empathy gap. Next, let’s see what we can do about it…

How To Deal With The Hot-Cold Empathy Gap

Before we see how to handle the negative effects of the hot-cold empathy gap, one important disclaimer: there is no permanent remedy against acting irrationally. You can only prepare for your unreasonable behavior and hope that you’ll actually follow through your plan when you’re possessed by strong emotions. Yet, it’s not guaranteed that you’ll always summon reason in unreasonable situations.

Sure, there are numerous online resources promising to make you the next modern monk, but that’s typically sand in the face.

There is an enormous gap between what we think we’ll do and what we actually do.

When calm, we can’t fully imagine how getting angry will affect our actions.

When angry, we can’t imagine being calm again and hence, we let our strong emotions guide us.

Below are suggestions on how we can mitigate the effect of the hot-cold empathy gap, considering that it’s nearly impossible to completely avoid the impact of heated emotions.

Handling Hot-to-Cold Empathy Gaps

We can relate dealing with the hot-to-cold empathy gap to the ancient practice of exorcism. That is, the religious ritual of evicting evil spirits from a person.

Why this reference?

Well, when you are in a hot state, you are essentially possessed.

You are shortsighted, uncontrollable, and intolerant of reason. It’s like a malevolent spiritual entity has taken control over your entire body. You are probably calm and logical most of the time, but in intense moments, you become heated and impulsive.

What can you do to shake off the demonic part of yourself that is sabotaging your life in tense moments?

Here are three strategies that build upon each other. Do them one by one, starting with…

1. Self-Reflection

Describe what you currently do when you’re in a hot state?

For instance, every day around 3 p.m., I’m infected by a beast-like hunger. When this happens, my seemingly empty stomach starts to dictate my actions. For most of the day, I focus on healthy meals, but around noon, my balanced eating regime seemingly evaporates. I start to scavenge the cabins in my apartment for scraps of unhealthy food to satisfy my appetite.

Another example is related to money. In particular, spending money.

When you are at home making plans for early retirement, you can probably calculate with great precision how much you’ll save and how much you will spend this month. Hence, you’ll probably start to marvel at your compounding wealth and pat yourself on the back for your mathematical skills.

Yet, when you happen to meet your friends who are quick to share how their portfolio of items grew, envy and insecurity start to take over. You’ll start to feel unfashionable or untredy. To compensate, you’ll probably withdraw from your savings account to get the newest trendy item, which naturally destroys your earlier plans for financial freedom.

The sad part about the above is that, in our materialistic society, you don’t even have to go outside to feel like you are missing out. A simple scroll on a social media website can lead to the same overwhelming feeling.

Lastly, let’s add an even more relatable example.

You probably don’t smoke or don’t drink, but when you go out with friends or when you’re at a company-covered event with free alcohol, you might totally forget about your sober days.

Probably it’s due to the social pressure, or perhaps there’s an internal issue you’re not fully aware of. Whatever it is, a mass of people drinking and smoking all around you can quickly overpower your usual behavior and lead you to get completely shitfaced.

The whole point of the self-reflection component is to sit down with yourself and note down these two:

1. How do you typically misbehave?
2. What factors, situations, and people reinforce this ill behavior?

Grab a notebook and write down the answers to the above. Seriously.

2. Perspective-Taking

By now, we know at least one situation that causes us to misbehave. We also know what typically pushes us into the realm of irrationality.

It can be a physiological state like hunger or tiredness. Or an emotional state like sadness or anger. Whatever it is, we have it noted down somewhere.

The next step is to imagine the impact of your ill behavior if you keep doing it over time.

To do this, ask yourself:

What is the impact of this decision/action on my life in the next week, month, or year?

Sure, devouring the equivalent of half of the products in a pastry shop won’t hurt your health if you do it only once. But what if you tend to gorge on junk food daily when hunger takes hold of your body?

Well, then the impact of this frequent behavior won’t be needing a new, larger pair of jeans. This will lead to all sorts of other new things…seeing new doctors, dealing with new health issues, and paying for drugs you didn’t plan on buying.

Similarly, if you tend to purchase new items every time you open Instagram and see what the cool kids are getting, you’ll now have to start looking for alternative ways to earn money. Eventually, you’ll probably have to meet with financial specialists to state the obvious: that you are spending more than you’re making.

Visualizing your future if you keep acting irrationally can give you powerful insights about the impact of your self-destructive behaviors.

3. Precommitment

Hopefully, by now, you recognize that you’ll face many temptations that will stray you from your desired path.

Sure, we can’t predict all the situations that can lead to hiccups in our desired behavior, but we now have a better sense of how we can do something unthinkably disgraceful.

Thus, right now, while in a calm state, we are better equipped to create a strategy that can prevent us from entering the realm of irrationality.

The strategy is called precommitment.

In essence, once you fully recognize that you’ll undoubtedly face overwhelming temptations trying to lead you astray from your desired noble path. No matter how much time you’ve spent planning your ideal life or how many books on habit change you’ve read, you’re going to trip up and dip your fingers into the yummy chocolate jar when you’re supposed to be on a diet.

If you’re into classics, a vivid example from the Greek literature is what Odysseus and his men did when they were approaching the deadly Sirens. In the text, Circe warns Odysseus about the true nature of the Sirens – crying beauties who bewitch men. Thus, to ensure they wouldn’t get lured to their impending doom, Odysseus is tied to the mast of the ship while his men plug their ears so they couldn’t hear the deadly Sirens’ songs.

In this sense, if you want to stop spending money on things you don’t necessarily need, it’s best to stop visiting sites that can inspire shopping.

Or, if you want to reduce the intake of junk food, you can equip your fridge with healthy meals when you are in a cold state – well rested and well-fed.

Here’s a question to ponder that will assist:

What barriers can I put in place now, knowing that my future self might not make the best decisions in a heated moment?

To return to the shopping example, if I know I tend to buy unnecessary items when I’m stressed or feeling like others are ahead of me, I can block access to those tempting shopping sites or reduce time spent with people who constantly talk about how rich they are.

By taking these steps in a calm, rational state, I remove the triggers that lead to impulsive behavior and make it easier to stick to my long-term goals.

Essentially, we are committing in advance – a.k.a. precommitting – towards a more reliable path.

Preemptively managing ill influences helps ensure that when stress or anger creeps in, we won’t be as vulnerable to making decisions we’ll later regret.

What Else Can Be Done To Handle The Hot-Cold Empathy Gap?

Journaling and trying to come up with some abstract action plan to handle stress, while not in stress, sounds good. Yet, all of this can’t prepare you for real shitty situations where emotions are quickly evaporating our ability to make decisions.

Fortunately, we can steal insights from the American army.

Take a second to imagine what the training regime looks for wanna-be soldier…

Personally, I’ve never been near a military camp. Yet, if I have to guess what’s the main goal of training an army officer, I’d say this: to prepare young soldiers for pretty brutal scenarios. Not only do you have to be physically strong, but mentally strong as well. After all, being a soldier entails heading into a battle. And in war situations, things can get tough. Hence, you have to be tough.

And how does the military train you for such difficult situations?

That’s right, they put soldiers in a hot state and train them, through constant repetition, to act adequately despite being on the verge of exhaustion.

Anastasia Fish, a second lieutenant in the United States Army, shares a glimpse of her training program:

On the first full day of training, I had to take a test. You have two minutes to do 49 pushups. You have two minutes to do 59 situps. You have 40 minutes to run five miles, and then you have to do six pullups right afterwards.

After that, I was asked to oversee a dozen people in a simulated military mission. I had to organize a surprise attack. I was very nervous about it.¹

In short, the goal of the grueling training program for becoming an army ranger is to put trainees into what they call stress inoculation. The training officers create a lot of stress, and they then teach rangers how to cope with it.

Ok, but how can we translate military stress inoculation into practical strategies for managing daily emotional challenges?

We need to build tolerance for stress.

We need to expose ourselves to the things that tend to trip us over in a controlled way to strengthen our resistance.

For example, if you want to break your relationship with junk food, you can plan to go to the nearest fast food restaurant but commit to eating a healthy meal, or not eating at all. You can plan to stay there for 20 minutes, just looking at how people eat burgers, and then leave.

Or, if you are a typical person who spends a lot, you can visit the mall without taking any cash with you. The goal here will be to expose yourself to the experience of shopping without shopping.

Repeated exposure to tempting situations, without giving in, can boost your mental strength. This will allow you to resist temptations in the future.

How to Close The Interpersonal Empathy Gaps?

What about other people?

What can we do to better understand what others are feeling?

Usually, when someone does something unimaginable, we are judgmental and easily label them as weak or horrible. Yet, what we fail to do in these cases is to imagine ourselves in their shoes.

A question that can guide us in this case is this:

What is happening in his/her world that could lead to this illogical behavior?

Probably the guy next to you is screaming at his child because he had a terrible day at work. Or probably your friend who always buys the newest clothes is doing it because she lacks recognition from her boyfriend and, through new outfits, is trying to extract compliments from others to feel better about herself.

When we see wrongdoings done by others, we might say that we will never ever do such things ourselves. But that’s because we are not currently in their position.

Who knows what will happen if we face similar to the above conditions?

Closing the interpersonal empathy gap happens by imagining, as cheesy as it might sound, what’s happening in the shoes of this other person.

Two question to ask yourself:

• What’s relevant for this person right now?
• What’s happening in his life that can cause this ill temper?

Usually, there’s so much going on in other people’s lives that we are unaware of. Whether it is a cancer diagnosis of a family member, a new baby, a dissolving marriage, the need to move to a new city, organizing a huge in-person event, or a set of challenges their child is experiencing at school.

If you ignore to think what might be happening in the lives of others, and you define them solely on one action, you miss the chance to adequately understand their full personality.

By being curious about the experiences of others, you start to uncover more about what can cause them to act irrationally in some situations.

All of this doesn’t mean that you should try to help – many people will dismiss, and may even get angry at your attempts to help if they don’t think they need it. But at least you can be more understanding of their actions when they behave irrationally.

Some Closing Thoughts

Many of us spend a good deal of time trying to be perfect. We read books about good habits, spend a great deal of money on courses about how to manage our finances, and even devote ourselves to self-improvement challenges. Yet, what we often fail to do is sit down and consider the following:

• What causes me to eat a whole cake despite my ambition to lose weight?
• Why do I repeatedly make poor financial decisions, even after learning better strategies?
• Why do I promise to change only to fall back into old bad habits?

Understanding the hot-cold empathy gap allows us to see that we are often strangers to ourselves. This psychological phenomenon reveals that we underestimate how different emotional states – whether it’s excitement, stress, or fatigue – impacts our decision-making. Despite confidently announcing that we’ll start a business, lose weight, become a disciplined person, or quit smoking, we typically overlook how fleeting our current motivation is. We fail to account for how our emotions will change over time and how they will influence our future decisions.

After all, motivation fades, and it’s quickly replaced by other emotions like sadness or despair. And in those states, our grand ambition will likely start to feel like a distant dream. What once felt like an exciting goal becomes overshadowed by the immediate desire for comfort or relief.

To prepare for these inevitable shifts, we can revisit the enthusiastic questions when we are not so pumped. When the fire of motivation isn’t burning so brightly.

For example, if you catch yourself smoking after announcing that you’ll quit, you can brainstorm what causes you to fail to keep your promise. What specific feelings or situations made you reach for a cigarette? Was it stress, social pressure, or perhaps boredom? This reflection allows you to see patterns and design better coping mechanisms for when you’re in a “hot” emotional state again.

People who excel at sticking to their goals under pressure or in challenging circumstances don’t simply rely on motivation. They develop emotional resilience – the ability to acknowledge their feelings without letting them dictate their actions. These individuals understand that emotions, while powerful, are temporary. They act based on their long-term objectives, not short-term impulses.²

To develop this skill, start by anticipating your emotional weak spots. Even further, put yourself in these emotional weak spots in a somehow controlled environment. By doing so, you can practice managing your reactions and build resilience before you’re in a real-life situation.

Ultimately, understanding the empathy gap helps us become more compassionate toward ourselves and others. We understand that we are not failures when we slip up. We are humans. Humans influenced by their feelings and emotions. With the right tools and questions, we can learn to navigate the ups and downs of our moods and stay aligned with our deeper goals, no matter what state we find ourselves in.

“Our emotions have a mind of their own, one which can hold views quite independently of our rational mind.” Daniel Goleman

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Footnotes:

1. In the heat of the moment: How intense emotions transform us (2019) NPR. Available at: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/783495595
2. A way to strengthen your emotional resilience is through discomfort training.