A hot-cold empathy gap is a cognitive bias in which people underestimate the influences of visceral drives on their own attitudes, preferences, and behaviors. It is a type of empathy gap. The most important aspect of this idea is that human understanding is "state-dependent". For example, when one is angry, it is difficult to understand what it is like for one to be calm, and vice versa; when one is blindly in love with someone, it is difficult to understand what it is like for one not to be, (or to imagine the possibility of not being blindly in love in the future). Importantly, an inability to minimize one's gap in empathy can lead to negative outcomes in medical settings (e.g., when a doctor needs to accurately diagnose the physical pain of a patient). Hot-cold empathy gaps can be analyzed according to their direction: They can also be classified in regards to their relation with time (past or future) and whether they occur intra- or inter-personally:

Visceral factors

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. 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.

Areas of study

Bullying

The empathy gap has been an important idea in research about the causes of bullying.

Addiction

George F. Loewenstein explored visceral factors related to addictions like smoking. The factors have to do with drive states which are essential for living – for example, sleepiness and hunger. Loewenstein discovered that addicts mistakenly categorize their addiction as an essential living drive state due to a behavior disorder.