Empathy gap
A hot-cold empathy gap is a cognitive bias in which a person underestimates the influences of visceral drives, and instead attributes behavior primarily to other, nonvisceral factors.
The term hot-cold empathy gap was coined by Carnegie Mellon University psychologist, George Loewenstein. Hot-cold empathy gaps are one of Loewenstein's major contributions to behavioral economics. The crux 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 happy, 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, such as to imagine the possibility of oneself not anymore blindly in love in the future.
[edit] Areas of Study
The implications of this were explored in the realm of sexual decision-making, where young men in an unaroused "cold state" fail to predict that when they are in an aroused "hot state" they will be more likely to make risky sexual decisions, such as not using a condom.[1]
The Empathy gap has also been an important idea in research about the causes of bullying.[2] In one study examining a central theory that, "only by identifying with a victim’s social suffering can one understand its devastating effects," [3] researchers created five experiments. The first four examined the degree to which participants in a game who were not excluded could estimate the social pain of those participants who were excluded. The findings were that those were not socially excluded consistently underestimated the pain felt by those who were excluded. A survey included in the study directed at teachers' opinions of school policy toward bullying found that those with an experience of social pain, caused by bullying, often rated the pain experienced by those facing bullying or social exclusion as higher than teachers who did not have such experience, and further, that teachers who had experienced social pain were more likely to punish students for bullying.[4]Empathy gap related to sports betting: http://howtobet.net/betting-articles/how-bookmaker-make-money-because-of-our-cognitive-biases-part4-the-empathy-gap/
[edit] References
- ^ Ariely, D., Loewenstein, G.F. (2006). The Heat of the Moment: The Effect of Sexual Arousal on Sexual Decision Making. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 19: 87-98.
- ^ Simone Rovers, et al, “Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2010,” National Center for Education Statistics, (2010): iv
- ^ http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-01-empathy-gap-bullying.html
- ^ Empathy gaps for social pain: Why people underestimate the pain of social suffering. Nordgren, Loran F.; Banas, Kasia; MacDonald, Geoff Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 100(1), Jan 2011, 120-128.
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