Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: today we're going to be taking a look at what
Speaker 1: I think is a very interesting and what is undoubtedly
Speaker 1: a very common failure of empathy. Now, empathy has come
Speaker 1: up on the show before. Of course, it is the
Speaker 1: the ability to share and comprehend another person's feelings, or
Speaker 1: at least it's usually defined in terms of other people.
Speaker 1: So we know about all kinds of ways that humans
Speaker 1: miscommunicate and misunderstand one another, and we fail to accurately
Speaker 1: model the internal states of other people in our lives.
Speaker 1: And of course, you know, a lot of the work
Speaker 1: of being a good friend, being a good romantic partner
Speaker 1: or spouse, being a good coworker, any of these relationships
Speaker 1: is really in trying to improve our ability to empathize
Speaker 1: with people in an accurate way. You want to understand
Speaker 1: how what you do makes other people feel, to sort
Speaker 1: of get inside their head and adjust your behavior accordingly.
Speaker 1: But one type of empathy shortcoming that apparently is quite real,
Speaker 1: but which we fail to even notice existing is our
Speaker 1: inability to accurately model and comprehend our own feelings when
Speaker 1: we're in a different state. Now, Rob, this immediately made
Speaker 1: me think of something that I know you've mentioned several
Speaker 1: times before, that that quote from the warren Zevon song
Speaker 1: where he says you're a whole different person when you're scared. Oh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it's a that's a pretty solid track off the
Speaker 1: two thousand two albums I Rides here with the lyrics
Speaker 1: by Hunter S. Thompson Actually, and uh, I'd say it's
Speaker 1: not the most lyrically complex of warren Zevon songs that
Speaker 1: you know. It has that kind of Thompson anxiety and
Speaker 1: doom uh groove going on, you know, not a concrete
Speaker 1: ballad or anything, not one of Yvon's deeper songs. But
Speaker 1: the title and chorus always struck with me because they
Speaker 1: I think I've mentioned on the show before, because it
Speaker 1: often ends up mashing up with the realities of human cognition, right,
Speaker 1: and it certainly relates to the topic we're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about today, which is a framework that is known
Speaker 1: as the hot cold empathy gap, and it has to
Speaker 1: do not just with fear, but with a host of
Speaker 1: other emotions and visceral motivating states anger. Joy discussed thirst, hunger, pain,
Speaker 1: sexual arousal, fatigue, and so forth, anything that can be
Speaker 1: strongly motivating on human thought and behavior. And I think
Speaker 1: today's episode might help us see ways in which you're
Speaker 1: not only a whole different person when you're scared, you're
Speaker 1: also a whole different person when you're thirsty, and a
Speaker 1: whole different person when you're sleep deprived. And not only
Speaker 1: are you a whole different person, that other person is
Speaker 1: someone who you do not really understand and whose behavior
Speaker 1: you are not really able to predict when you're not
Speaker 1: in that state. And finally, that the lack of empathy
Speaker 1: between these two states is mutual. That's right. We're gonna
Speaker 1: get into a whole sort of chorus of of of
Speaker 1: selves situation in here where the we can kind of
Speaker 1: think of ourselvesselves as like a a jury that is
Speaker 1: arguing with itself, and none of these individuals can really
Speaker 1: see eye to eye on the important topics. Now, um,
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting to think about our relationship with
Speaker 1: these different emotions, but particularly anger. Uh, you know, humans
Speaker 1: have have obviously pondered states of anger for a long time.
Speaker 1: As long as they've had self reflection, and as long
Speaker 1: as we've been capable of noticing that there are indeed
Speaker 1: changes in our mental state that impact behavior and also
Speaker 1: can seem far into us, at least on reflection. Right,
Speaker 1: Because this this gap can be both prospective and retrospective.
Speaker 1: It's not only that you failed to understand exactly what
Speaker 1: you're going to think and feel and how you're going
Speaker 1: to act when you're angry. You can also look back
Speaker 1: on yourself having been angry five hours ago and not
Speaker 1: understand why you behaved the way you did. It can
Speaker 1: seem like that was somebody else, right, And of course
Speaker 1: there are various examples. You can turn to have supernatural
Speaker 1: attempts to explain this. You know what sort of spirit
Speaker 1: or demon beset me when I was in that state?
Speaker 1: But then there are plenty of logical attempts to understand
Speaker 1: what's going on as well. So I was looking at
Speaker 1: a book by William V. Harris titled Restraining Rage, Dealing
Speaker 1: with Anger and Antiquity, and I was also looking at
Speaker 1: a write up of the book by Joy Connolly. I
Speaker 1: was taken by by this because Connolly cites another book
Speaker 1: that I've read from Elaine Scary is The Body and Pain,
Speaker 1: which is a very deep contemplation of the nature of pain.
Speaker 1: I've I've sited on the show before. Um kind of
Speaker 1: a kind of a thick, deep read in many respects.
Speaker 1: But but but there's some wonderful bits to it. Um.
Speaker 1: A point that Scary makes in the book is that
Speaker 1: human language is severely lacking in its ability to plunge
Speaker 1: the subjective variety and depths of human pain, which, to refresh,
Speaker 1: entails not only nerve signals, not only just sort of
Speaker 1: basic information about what your body is doing or what's
Speaker 1: being done to it, but also emotional states about those
Speaker 1: nerve signals, etcetera. Yeah, because pain is not only a
Speaker 1: physical feeling the same way something might feel warm or
Speaker 1: might feel fuzzy, uh, it is also a motivation state.
Speaker 1: Pain comes with a you must clause. So Connolly compares
Speaker 1: pain to anger in this a subjective power that is
Speaker 1: also transformative and protean. Meanwhile, Harris's main area of exploration
Speaker 1: is that out of antiquity arises the popular idea that
Speaker 1: anger is something that can and should be managed in control,
Speaker 1: and by the Imperial Roman time, it's widely and popularly
Speaker 1: held you can simply live an anger free life if
Speaker 1: you know what you're doing and you're devoted enough to
Speaker 1: to this way of life. Yeah, I'd be kind of
Speaker 1: skeptical about how reasonable it is to expect that you
Speaker 1: can do this totally for your whole life. But you
Speaker 1: can probably, uh curtail anger impulses to some extent. And
Speaker 1: I think this would be part of the philosophy of
Speaker 1: like the Stoics, right, who might say, try to try
Speaker 1: to observe your emotions as if they are something from happening,
Speaker 1: you know, at a distance that does not affect you, right, right,
Speaker 1: So it's I mean, it's it's not to say that
Speaker 1: controlling your emotions is not important. I mean, we all
Speaker 1: have to be able to regulate emotions. But this idea
Speaker 1: that that anger just shouldn't be felt and you should
Speaker 1: never feel it, that's to a large extent contrary to
Speaker 1: modern understanding of anger, the idea that you know, anger
Speaker 1: is also something that must be felt and even released
Speaker 1: at times. It is not healthy to just bottle all
Speaker 1: that anger down and say and put it away, to
Speaker 1: just push it all into your depths. Um. But by
Speaker 1: by the second century see Harris points out that there
Speaker 1: there are Christian thinkers like St. Augustine and others that
Speaker 1: acknowledge so, well, okay, there is such a thing as
Speaker 1: righteous anger. You can be angry and and and it's okay,
Speaker 1: it's there's there's like a light side to anger itself.
Speaker 1: Of course, then again, if you look at a lot
Speaker 1: of the things people actually do while believing they're acting
Speaker 1: in quote righteous anger, a lot of it is pretty
Speaker 1: terrible stuff. So like so it's like, uh, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a weird contradiction. I mean, anger is part of the
Speaker 1: suite of things that gives human life its character, and
Speaker 1: so it's kind of hard to imagine a rich and
Speaker 1: full life that doesn't have an anger component to it.
Speaker 1: And yet most of us would probably realize that we're
Speaker 1: we do not make the best decisions when we're angry,
Speaker 1: and that even even in states where we're maybe truly
Speaker 1: righteously angry about something, a reaction to that situation might
Speaker 1: be better determined in a state of calm than in
Speaker 1: that state of anger. Right right, though, it is interesting
Speaker 1: to to to think about, like all the different states
Speaker 1: we go through trying to decide what states are the
Speaker 1: best states in which to make various decisions. If you
Speaker 1: if you follow that that line of of of questioning
Speaker 1: too far, you you almost feel like you're venturing into
Speaker 1: astrology territory, like like, Okay, I have to make this decision.
Speaker 1: Is this a decision I should make um when I'm
Speaker 1: full or when I'm hungry? Or should I make it
Speaker 1: mid meal? You know? Is this a morning decision or
Speaker 1: an afternoon decision? A sleepy or an awake decision? How
Speaker 1: many cups of coffee should I have had before I
Speaker 1: get into the deciding state for this decision? Well, that
Speaker 1: highlights another problem, which is that, of course, decision theory
Speaker 1: is goal dependent, right, So part of exactly what's going
Speaker 1: on in in that those contradictions you just highlight is
Speaker 1: that when we're in one state, we have different goals
Speaker 1: than we do when we're in another state. I mean,
Speaker 1: usually the way you can think about it is that
Speaker 1: when you are calm and when you can think logically,
Speaker 1: you're able to prioritize the things that are like your
Speaker 1: long term goals or the things that mean the most
Speaker 1: to you that you wish in your other states you
Speaker 1: would prioritize. But then once you get into those states,
Speaker 1: you don't anymore you might prioritize some kind of like
Speaker 1: short term acquisition or relief that doesn't align with your
Speaker 1: long term goals. Yeah, exactly. Now to go back to
Speaker 1: ancient thought and the topic we're discussing here today, Uh,
Speaker 1: there was still some some serious contemplation regardings, for instance,
Speaker 1: how anger interacts with reason. Harris In in his book
Speaker 1: shares the following quote from Aristotle's Eudemian ethics. Quote, Anger
Speaker 1: thumos seems to listen to reason to some extent, but
Speaker 1: to mishear it, as do hasty slaves who run out
Speaker 1: before they hear the whole of what one says and
Speaker 1: then muddle the order, or as dogs bark if there
Speaker 1: is simply a knock on the door before looking to
Speaker 1: see if it is a friend. So Anger, by reason
Speaker 1: of the warmth and hastiness of its nature, though adheres,
Speaker 1: does not hear and order and rushes to retaliate for
Speaker 1: reason or a mat genation, informs us that we have
Speaker 1: been insulted or slighted, and anger, reasoning as it were,
Speaker 1: that anything like this must be fought against, heats up
Speaker 1: of course straight away, whereas appetites do not obey reason
Speaker 1: at all, and are therefore more disgraceful, for the person
Speaker 1: who is unrestricted in respect of anger is in a
Speaker 1: sense controlled by reason. Now, not everything in this quote
Speaker 1: is is useful for our discussions today, and it's it's
Speaker 1: clear even from this that there is a you know,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a contemplation though, of how how thumos
Speaker 1: affects logos, how anger alters the functionality of our reason
Speaker 1: and certainly from a modern perspective, our abilities to simulate
Speaker 1: the internal states of of of ourselves and others. This
Speaker 1: is just part of human reason. Now, to come back
Speaker 1: to the idea of hot and cold. Uh, it's notable
Speaker 1: that this is exactly the way that Aristotle discussed anger
Speaker 1: and fear. He believed that anger caused the blood to
Speaker 1: radiate away from the heart, resulting in thoughts and actions
Speaker 1: of anger. And fear was the flip side of this,
Speaker 1: when the it contracts towards the heart, resulting in bodily
Speaker 1: chills and various symptoms of fear that were reported things
Speaker 1: like trembling, sweating, and even your nation. Uh. Though I
Speaker 1: guess in the sense of the psychological principle, both of
Speaker 1: these would be hot states. Both anger and fear are
Speaker 1: states where you're being driven by your emotions. So the
Speaker 1: for the purposes of our psychological discussion here today, being
Speaker 1: in a state of fear is hot. But from Aristotle's
Speaker 1: point of view, being in a state of fear would
Speaker 1: be cold. Sure, okay, not to be confused with being
Speaker 1: physically cold, which will also factor into the experiments will discuss.
Speaker 1: So as my main source on this, I was looking
Speaker 1: at a paper published in the year two thousand five
Speaker 1: in the journal Health Psychology by the Carnegie Mellon Professor
Speaker 1: of Psychology and Economics, George Loewenstein, and this paper was
Speaker 1: called Hot Cold, Empathy, gaps and Medical decision Making. Alright,
Speaker 1: so the first thing we need to do in talking
Speaker 1: about the paper is a couple of definitions. So first
Speaker 1: of all, there is the concept of affect. What is affect, Well,
Speaker 1: the the ap A psych Dictionary defines it as quote
Speaker 1: any experience of feeling or emotion, rang ranging from suffering
Speaker 1: to elation, from the simplest to the most complex sensations
Speaker 1: of feeling, and from the most normal to the most
Speaker 1: pathological emotional reactions. So as a mental shortcut, you can
Speaker 1: think about psychological references to affect as feelings so these
Speaker 1: would include common emotions such as happiness, sadness, anger, fear, discussed, surprise,
Speaker 1: and so forth. However, for the purpose of this paper,
Speaker 1: Loewenstein notes that he's using a more inclusive definition of affect,
Speaker 1: which pulls in not only these classically recognized subjective emotions
Speaker 1: I just mentioned, but also motivational drive states. And these
Speaker 1: could include things like hunger, thirst, physical pain and discomfort, addiction, cravings,
Speaker 1: and so forth. And so in the other literature, affect
Speaker 1: might refer to just the emotions and not the drive states,
Speaker 1: but for simplicity's sake, he's going to say affect in
Speaker 1: this paper to refer to all of it. So what's
Speaker 1: the difference between affective states of cold versus hot? Basically,
Speaker 1: it is a cold state is whenever you are not
Speaker 1: in some kind of affectively excited state. It's whenever you
Speaker 1: are calm able to think reasonably and make reasonable plans
Speaker 1: and so forth. Meanwhile, anytime you're feeling in an intense
Speaker 1: emotion or drive for something, this is a hot state.
Speaker 1: You are in an activated emotional or motivational place, and
Speaker 1: that that stuff is affecting your behavior, because it certainly
Speaker 1: does affect your behavior. You might think of affective states
Speaker 1: as a kind of mode of the brain can occupy,
Speaker 1: and then within that mode, nearly everything the brain does
Speaker 1: works a little bit differently than it does in other
Speaker 1: affective states. So Lowenstein writes, quote, affect influences virtually every
Speaker 1: aspect of human functioning perception, attention, inference, learning, memory, goal choice, physiology, reflexes,
Speaker 1: self concept, and so on. Indeed, it has been argued
Speaker 1: that the very function of affect is to orchestrate a
Speaker 1: comprehensive response to critical situations that were faced repeatedly in
Speaker 1: the evolutionary past. So I think it's very reasonable to
Speaker 1: think about affect both in terms of these emotions like
Speaker 1: sadness or anger, and in terms of drive states like
Speaker 1: hunger or thirst, or or desire for sleep to be
Speaker 1: not just a thing you feel in your brain, but
Speaker 1: a sort of mode that takes over your entire brain
Speaker 1: and affects sort of becomes your person when you are
Speaker 1: in it. And of course we know by this definition
Speaker 1: affect has has powerful effects on decision making, typically in
Speaker 1: this form, right, you know, So when we are in
Speaker 1: a cool and logical state, we can weigh costs and benefits.
Speaker 1: We can make plans. We can organize our behavior to
Speaker 1: serve whatever our long term goal is. So might think,
Speaker 1: you know, I want to reduce my sugar consumption, so
Speaker 1: I'm not going to eat six candy bars like I
Speaker 1: did yesterday. Or I want to be well rested tomorrow.
Speaker 1: I'll be at my best if I'm well arrested, so
Speaker 1: I will go to bed early tonight. Or you know,
Speaker 1: I want to maintain a good relationship with my friends,
Speaker 1: so I will not blow up with rage at them
Speaker 1: about some minor thing they do that annoys me. Or
Speaker 1: you might think I want more money, so I'm going
Speaker 1: to ask for a raise at work. But then of
Speaker 1: course affect comes in and it can interfere with us
Speaker 1: following through on the things we planned to do when
Speaker 1: we were in a cool state. So of course, maybe
Speaker 1: you planned not to eat the candy, but then you
Speaker 1: get hungry and you think I want them, and just
Speaker 1: the brain, it's like there's a different person guiding your brain.
Speaker 1: You might plan to go to bed early, but then
Speaker 1: that phone just kind of wants you to keep scrolling,
Speaker 1: and suddenly it's three am. You felt like you couldn't
Speaker 1: stop for some reason, uh, and so forth, Maybe you know,
Speaker 1: you plan to ask your boss for a raise, but
Speaker 1: then in that meeting you suddenly get kind of scared
Speaker 1: for some reason that you and anticipate, and you just
Speaker 1: never bring it up. And I'm sure every single person
Speaker 1: listening has had experiences of this kind in one way
Speaker 1: or another. It's it's a core contradiction of human life
Speaker 1: that we want to behave in a way we know
Speaker 1: we should behave to achieve certain goals in the long run,
Speaker 1: but then at that moment of choice, something else seems
Speaker 1: to take over and we behave in a completely different
Speaker 1: way than we plan to now. The core observation of
Speaker 1: the hot cold empathy gap is based on this contradiction,
Speaker 1: but it actually takes the problem one step further. Not
Speaker 1: only do we often fail to behave the way we
Speaker 1: know we should in the moment, we are also really
Speaker 1: bad at realizing in advance that this might happen or
Speaker 1: understanding in retrospect why it happened. And Lowenstein writes, quote,
Speaker 1: people have difficulty predicting what they will want and how
Speaker 1: they will behave in affective states that are different from
Speaker 1: their current state. So it's not just that we often
Speaker 1: give into these states that oil our long term plans
Speaker 1: and goals. It's that we fail to anticipate what we
Speaker 1: will think, how we will feel, and what we will
Speaker 1: do when we're actually in those states later. So this
Speaker 1: is the empathy gap, and research shows that it tends
Speaker 1: to go in both directions. So there are hot to
Speaker 1: cold empathy gaps and there are cold to hot empathy gaps.
Speaker 1: So the cold to hot empathy gap is more what
Speaker 1: we were just talking about. Uh, you know, you're you're
Speaker 1: in a calm state and you just don't You're not
Speaker 1: able to predict how much you will be affected in
Speaker 1: the future when you're in a hot state. And the
Speaker 1: hot cold version is that people in hot states underestimate
Speaker 1: the extent to which they're thinking and behavior are influenced
Speaker 1: by transient affective states. So, uh, if you're making decisions
Speaker 1: while you're angry, you might at some level recognize that
Speaker 1: you're angry, but you're still probably going to severely underappreciate
Speaker 1: how differently you're acting right now because of your hanger
Speaker 1: than than you would be acting otherwise. And then he
Speaker 1: offers up three other categories of hot cold empathy gaps,
Speaker 1: so they can be prospective, retrospective, and interpersonal prospective empathy gaps,
Speaker 1: or when we fail to predict our own future behavior
Speaker 1: in an effective state different from our current One classic
Speaker 1: example is the grocery shopping when you're hungry. I've done
Speaker 1: it many times, you know, like you you just don't
Speaker 1: realize how much you're not really going to want this
Speaker 1: thing you're buying later because you're you're hungry while you're
Speaker 1: buying it. Um Retrospective gaps are when you look back
Speaker 1: and realize you just you don't understand how or why
Speaker 1: you behaved as you did when you were in a
Speaker 1: different affective state. Like you know, I, I know I
Speaker 1: was angry, but like, why did I yell at Jeffrey
Speaker 1: over nothing just because his shoes were squeaking on the floor.
Speaker 1: I don't understand why I blew up like that. And
Speaker 1: then finally, interpersonal gaps are the inability to understand and
Speaker 1: predict the behavior of another person who's in a different
Speaker 1: affective state than yourself. I would propose that a huge
Speaker 1: person edge of the time you are analyzing the behavior
Speaker 1: of another person and you think to yourself, why would
Speaker 1: they do that? It doesn't make any sense. It's because
Speaker 1: they were in some kind of affective state that you
Speaker 1: are not currently sharing. Yeah, it's it's interesting to think.
Speaker 1: I mean you see various little tidbits of wisdom that
Speaker 1: often captured this. I remember we had a coworker us
Speaker 1: to have one over their death that said, like, each
Speaker 1: person is fighting a great battle. Remember that each person
Speaker 1: is fighting a great battle or something that extent, which
Speaker 1: is to you could interpret as being like, consider the
Speaker 1: fact that anyone you're interacting with is in is in
Speaker 1: in an effective state. You know that that they are
Speaker 1: you know, angry or angry, etcetera. But but I wonder
Speaker 1: does that sometimes sort of make you assume that anyone
Speaker 1: you're interacting with is going to be in some sort
Speaker 1: of an extreme state, And um, I don't know, it
Speaker 1: can I feel like it can make one wary of
Speaker 1: other people, you know, like, assume everyone is angry. It's
Speaker 1: it becomes a very difficult world. Well, I would interpret
Speaker 1: that more to be like, uh uh, be open minded
Speaker 1: about what is motivating other people and that they actually
Speaker 1: maybe when their behavior seems unreasonable to you, it's worth
Speaker 1: remembering that it's possible. I mean, it varies by the
Speaker 1: situation obviously, but it's possible they are just reacting to
Speaker 1: something that's going on in their lives, where you would
Speaker 1: be reacting the same way if you were in the
Speaker 1: same situation. But I mean, yeah, it's true that, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are all these aphorisms that try to communicate this.
Speaker 1: There's another paper by Loewenstein and a and a co
Speaker 1: author named Leaf and boven Uh that's looking into how
Speaker 1: how the hot cold empathy gap affects perceptions of thirst,
Speaker 1: hunger and thirst. And there's a traditional Irish proverb sited
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the paper that says, the full
Speaker 1: person does not understand the needs of the hungry. And
Speaker 1: I think that's good because that's true not just of
Speaker 1: different people. Like when you're really satisfied, you you you
Speaker 1: don't understand the needs of somebody who is not satisfied
Speaker 1: in the same way. But you also don't even understand
Speaker 1: what you would be like if you were in the
Speaker 1: same situation of not being satisfied. Than in fact, we
Speaker 1: could go ahead and look at that that thirst paper
Speaker 1: as one example, so Lowenstein in this article. So it's
Speaker 1: a number of different studies that have illustrated the hot
Speaker 1: cold empathy gap, and this one is in a paper
Speaker 1: called social projection of transient drive states published in the
Speaker 1: Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin in two thousand three. This
Speaker 1: is by George Lowenstein and Leaf van Boven and this
Speaker 1: was a study conducted at a gym. I thought this
Speaker 1: was pretty funny. It goes like this, So the researchers
Speaker 1: asked people arriving at the gym uh if they're planning
Speaker 1: on a vigorous cardio workout, and if they are, if
Speaker 1: they would be interested in taking part in a short survey.
Speaker 1: The survey involved in eagining yourself in a scenario and
Speaker 1: then answering questions about the scenario. So you would read
Speaker 1: a prompt that that goes as follows, with a few
Speaker 1: abridgements for length. It says, imagine that three vacation ers
Speaker 1: in Colorado this past August embarked on a short six
Speaker 1: mile hike. As the day wore on, they realized that
Speaker 1: they were hopelessly lost. Worse, because they had packed lightly
Speaker 1: for a short hike, they had not carried much in
Speaker 1: the way of food or water. In the space below,
Speaker 1: please take the perspective of one of the three hikers
Speaker 1: and describe your situation, how you got into it, how
Speaker 1: you feel now. Both physically and mentally and what you're
Speaker 1: hoping will happen. And then after that prompt they were
Speaker 1: asked specific questions such as, which do you think is
Speaker 1: the most unpleasant for the lost hikers, hunger or thirst?
Speaker 1: Which do you think the hikers regretted not packing more
Speaker 1: water or food if you were in the hikers shoes,
Speaker 1: which do you think you would regret not packing uh?
Speaker 1: And then finally they were asked to rate, on a
Speaker 1: scale of one to ten, their current level of hunger, thirst,
Speaker 1: and how warm they were. Now here's the kicker. After
Speaker 1: the people agreed to participate in the survey, they were
Speaker 1: randomly divided into two groups. One group did the survey
Speaker 1: immediately so just whatever you know, normal state they're in
Speaker 1: when they're entering the gym before the workout begins, and
Speaker 1: the other group did the survey immediately after they finished
Speaker 1: their workout. Based on the hot cold empathy gap, the
Speaker 1: authors predicted that the people who just finished a workout
Speaker 1: would be much more likely to think that the hikers
Speaker 1: would regret not bringing water and to mention thirst in
Speaker 1: the open ended response, because they themselves would more likely
Speaker 1: be hot and thirsty after their cardio routine and the
Speaker 1: experiment did indeed find what the authors had predicted. The
Speaker 1: differences were pretty strong, so like the difference in um
Speaker 1: people who rated the thirst as being more unpleasant than hunger.
Speaker 1: For the hikers, that was fifty guests thirst would be
Speaker 1: more important before exercise, using eight percent of the people
Speaker 1: thought thirst would be more uh important after they had exercised,
Speaker 1: And and similar trends broke through when they were asked
Speaker 1: to imagine themselves in the in that scenario as well.
Speaker 1: Thirst is just a much more salient concept when you
Speaker 1: are actually thirsty, even though like you know rationally that
Speaker 1: in that situation you would be thirsty, that's not like
Speaker 1: a surprise. And yet somehow the fact that you are
Speaker 1: actually thirsty in this moment makes you realize it with
Speaker 1: much greater intensity. Yeah, this is this. I love this
Speaker 1: because this is one of those revelations that I think
Speaker 1: too many people will not come. It doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: that much of a revelation, you know, like it may
Speaker 1: seem just like an outrageous overstatement of the obvious that yes,
Speaker 1: while you are yourself thirsty, you can relate more to
Speaker 1: thirsty individuals and situations in which one might be thirsty.
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, here we see these various questionnaires
Speaker 1: prove this out, um, you know, and and ultimately like
Speaker 1: show even more important is the conditions in which we
Speaker 1: have the empathy, but then the conditions in which we
Speaker 1: are then removed from that empathy. That's the part that's
Speaker 1: really telling, right, I mean, I think it's not surprising
Speaker 1: that a thirsty person would rate thirst as very important
Speaker 1: in a hypothetical scenario. I think what's more surprising about
Speaker 1: it is the level to which when you're not thirsty,
Speaker 1: you don't predict how important thirst is when you are thirsty.
Speaker 1: Right now. Of course, we all have moments there in
Speaker 1: a life where we're at least momentarily forced to confront
Speaker 1: that where we for instance, we we realize, oh, I
Speaker 1: didn't bring enough water for this hike. I brought the
Speaker 1: amount of water that that that that that fully satisfied me.
Speaker 1: I thought was going to be appropriate, and that was incorrect,
Speaker 1: right right, Which is a really good example of the
Speaker 1: real world consequences of the hot cold empathy gap. You
Speaker 1: don't pack enough water on the hike because even though
Speaker 1: you know when it ants rationally that you will need water,
Speaker 1: you you just underestimate how much you will need water.
Speaker 1: The thirsty you has a greater appreciation for that water need. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's one of those examples where like the it seems
Speaker 1: like an outrageous amount sometimes you know, like that's a
Speaker 1: lot of water. I don't need that much water, but
Speaker 1: you do need that much. That's why they're bothering to
Speaker 1: tell you, because they feel, you know, left your own devices,
Speaker 1: you might only bring like one flimsy bottle, you know.
Speaker 1: Lowenstein goes on to elaborate about this with an interesting
Speaker 1: line of thoughts. So it starts with a general finding
Speaker 1: that we are uh somewhat different than the hot cold
Speaker 1: empathy gap, just that we're generally worse at predicting the
Speaker 1: behavior of other people than we think we are. Sometimes
Speaker 1: other people's thoughts and behaviors don't make sense to us.
Speaker 1: We don't know why they do it. We're not able
Speaker 1: to predict what they do. And the question is why
Speaker 1: why do we often fail to model the thoughts and
Speaker 1: behaviors of other people? A common way of answering this
Speaker 1: question in the theoretical psychological realm is that we tend
Speaker 1: to underestimate or overestimate the differences between ourselves and others
Speaker 1: as people, sort of as in terms of fixed psychological traits,
Speaker 1: and these are concepts known as false consensus assuming that
Speaker 1: other people are like us and think like we do,
Speaker 1: or false uniqueness, assuming that we are unique and other
Speaker 1: people don't think like us or would do the opposite
Speaker 1: of whatever we do. And these effects could both place
Speaker 1: some role, But Lowenstein in this paper actually argues that
Speaker 1: the largest source of error when we fail to predict
Speaker 1: how other people will act is not misjudging the gap
Speaker 1: between different people's fundamental tendencies and personalities, but in misjudging
Speaker 1: the differences even within ourselves between affective states. So he writes, quote,
Speaker 1: when people attempt to predict the behavior of another person
Speaker 1: in a different situation than their own, they first attempt
Speaker 1: to predict how they would behave in that situation, and
Speaker 1: then adjust for perceived differences between themselves and the person
Speaker 1: whose behavior they're attempting to predict. Because they mispredict their
Speaker 1: own behavior as a result of hot cold empathy gaps,
Speaker 1: they then mispredict the behavior of others. And I thought
Speaker 1: it was interesting how much this sort of aligns with,
Speaker 1: or at least connects to another psychology concept we've done
Speaker 1: episodes on in the past, the the idea of fundamental
Speaker 1: attribution error, which is the finding that when we observe
Speaker 1: what other people do, we tend to overestimate the influence
Speaker 1: of fixed traits like disposition and personality and underestimate the
Speaker 1: influence of transient situational factors. So if you were to
Speaker 1: see somebody else I don't know, uh, steal a bottle
Speaker 1: of water or something, due to fundamental attribution error, you
Speaker 1: might think, Oh, they stole that bottle of water because
Speaker 1: they're a dirty, dishonest thief and they just steal. That's
Speaker 1: what this person is like. But in fact maybe they
Speaker 1: did it even though they wouldn't normally steal, but because
Speaker 1: they're very thirsty, And in fact, you would do the
Speaker 1: same thing in that situation, but you're not very thirsty now,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't occur to you. The fundamental attribution raor
Speaker 1: episode was the one where we started with that that
Speaker 1: big thought experiment about alien you know, like the question
Speaker 1: of do you let Kine onto the ship and wilily
Speaker 1: refuses and so forth. That was fun, but thirst is
Speaker 1: not the only effective state. Of course, Again, the hot
Speaker 1: cold tympathy gap seems to apply to basically any emotional
Speaker 1: or motivational drive state. Another one that is commonly researched
Speaker 1: is pain. So there's a study that Lonstein talks about
Speaker 1: here where he was also a co author. This one
Speaker 1: is by Daniel Reid and Lowenstein on It's called Enduring
Speaker 1: Pain for Money Decisions based on the Perception and Memory
Speaker 1: of Pain in the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. And
Speaker 1: this was studying the decision making of people who are
Speaker 1: asked to stick their hand in a bucket of ice
Speaker 1: water for money. Uh. That might sound kind of weird,
Speaker 1: but buckets of cold water are often used for psychological
Speaker 1: studies on pain tolerance because they succeed in causing extreme
Speaker 1: momentary discomfort with very little risk of permanent injury. And
Speaker 1: so this experiment used monetary pricing to test pain tolerance.
Speaker 1: You know, it would be looking at things like, hey,
Speaker 1: would you dip your hand in this bucket of ice
Speaker 1: water for thirty seconds for five dollars? Would you do
Speaker 1: it for ten dollars and so forth? And an interesting
Speaker 1: finding here was that people who had experienced the ice
Speaker 1: bucket dip a week earlier demanded lower compensation to do
Speaker 1: it again than people who had done the ice dip
Speaker 1: just moments before. So even though they had both had
Speaker 1: the same experience, people in a in the situation ironically
Speaker 1: named cold state, who were you know, it had been
Speaker 1: a while and they were calm, they were more willing
Speaker 1: to take the pain again for less money. And people
Speaker 1: in a quote hot state, the people who had just
Speaker 1: had the experience were less willing and demanded more money
Speaker 1: before they would repeat it. Uh. And from here Lowenstein
Speaker 1: goes on to quote an interesting passage from um from
Speaker 1: a book called Shadows on the Waste Land by stroud
Speaker 1: N that was about crossing Antarctica, and it's talking about
Speaker 1: a figure in that story who was suffering from I
Speaker 1: believe severe frost bite, and the author is saying I
Speaker 1: could do nothing but reassure him that I understood, though
Speaker 1: I did not. Really, pain is a problem that cannot
Speaker 1: be shared. Yeah, and this this is something that uh,
Speaker 1: this is one of the core points that Elaine Scary
Speaker 1: makes in the Body in Pain about you know, in particular,
Speaker 1: that there's just the pain is ultimately so impossible at
Speaker 1: times for us to relate from one person to another.
Speaker 1: And it also it is like basically the limits are
Speaker 1: the imagination that it's Uh. This always makes me think
Speaker 1: of a line from Corey McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses,
Speaker 1: where he talks about um, you know, contemplating all the world,
Speaker 1: the pain in the world, um, saying quote, he imagined
Speaker 1: the pain of the world to be like some formless
Speaker 1: parasitic being seeking out the warmth of human souls wherein
Speaker 1: to incubate. And he thought he knew what made one
Speaker 1: liable to its visitations. What he had not known was
Speaker 1: that it was mindless, and so had no way to
Speaker 1: know the limits of those souls. And what he feared
Speaker 1: was that there might be no limits and scary into
Speaker 1: their hands, says quote. The only state that is as
Speaker 1: anomalous as pain is the imagination. Yeah. The example of
Speaker 1: pain is so interesting because while of course other people
Speaker 1: have always experienced types of pain that you haven't. Everybody
Speaker 1: has experienced pain of some sort, and yet there's an
Speaker 1: ineffability to the experience of pain that, even having experienced
Speaker 1: it before, you sort of can't recreate in your mind
Speaker 1: without being in pain in the moment, Like you can
Speaker 1: acknowledge that there is something about pain that you just
Speaker 1: don't get when you're not in pain. You can realize
Speaker 1: that's true, and you still don't get it, Like realizing
Speaker 1: that gap doesn't close the gap. Yeah. Absolutely, And this
Speaker 1: actually comes back to there's another example in the Lowenstein
Speaker 1: paper I wanted to mention briefly that was about drug
Speaker 1: craving as another thing that's been studied in the hot
Speaker 1: cold empathy gap research. So there's a study by Jordano
Speaker 1: at All in two thousand four conducted with people who
Speaker 1: were in treatment for heroin addiction. Of course, quitting highly
Speaker 1: addictive drugs can cause a lot of pain, a lot
Speaker 1: of discomfort, you know, it is it is compared to
Speaker 1: various direct methods of pain infliction often. But so the
Speaker 1: people who were undergoing this treatment trying to get off
Speaker 1: of heroin, we're receiving a methodone like maintenance drug called
Speaker 1: bupreno frin or b up. And the study is summarized
Speaker 1: as follows in Lowenstein. So it's talking about the people
Speaker 1: in the treatment here and they quote, uh, chose between
Speaker 1: getting an extra dose of b u P versus different
Speaker 1: money amounts, So for example, ten dollars versus an extra dose,
Speaker 1: twenty dollars versus an extra dose, and they got to
Speaker 1: pick which one they would prefer. Continuing with the quote,
Speaker 1: they were told that they would receive their preferred item
Speaker 1: from one of these pairs when they came in for
Speaker 1: treatment five days later. The critical experimental manipulation involved whether
Speaker 1: they made this choice when they were currently deprived, right
Speaker 1: before receiving their current dose of BUP, or right after
Speaker 1: when they could be expected to be satiated now. According
Speaker 1: to the hot cold empathy gap, the authors predicted that
Speaker 1: people who were currently experiencing drug craving would be better
Speaker 1: at predicting the value of a future extra dose than
Speaker 1: people who were not currently experiencing craving, and the hypothesis
Speaker 1: was in fact confirmed. The people in the hot state
Speaker 1: of craving were better able to predict the motivating strength
Speaker 1: of future drug cravings than the people in a cold
Speaker 1: state who were doing okay at the moment uh, and
Speaker 1: the difference in terms of dollar value was almost double.
Speaker 1: So cold state patients who had just been satiated predicted
Speaker 1: they would value a future dose at thirty five dollars.
Speaker 1: Hot state patients predicted that they would valuate around sixty dollars.
Speaker 1: And drug addiction isn't in many ways. An almost perfect
Speaker 1: illustration of the hot cold empathy gap because very often
Speaker 1: a person who's dealing with addiction realizes they would be
Speaker 1: better off if they were able to quit, and they
Speaker 1: may repeatedly plan to do so until the affective state
Speaker 1: of drug craving becomes overwhelmingly powerful, and the person who,
Speaker 1: in a cold state planned to quit is unable to
Speaker 1: anticipate how powerfully motivating their later craving state will be,
Speaker 1: even though they have personally experienced it many times before.
Speaker 1: And this is one of the really surprising things about
Speaker 1: the hot cold empathy gap that you might think once
Speaker 1: you have experienced the difference, once you have have known
Speaker 1: firsthand a particular hot cold dichotomy, now you will get
Speaker 1: it and you'll be able to empathize with the hot
Speaker 1: state once you're in a cold state again. But no,
Speaker 1: this is not what the research finds. Mirror experience of
Speaker 1: the gap does not seem to close the gap, and
Speaker 1: this part is crucial to understand. We have all experienced
Speaker 1: these gaps in various forms before, regarding a number of
Speaker 1: different effective states. We know that we're different when we're
Speaker 1: angry than when we're not angry. We know we're different
Speaker 1: when we're hungry than not hungry, and yet this somehow
Speaker 1: does not inoculate us against future empathy gaps. We still
Speaker 1: fail to predict the difference in both directions. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the addiction model here is. I think it's
Speaker 1: fascinating because on on one hand, yeah, there's if you're
Speaker 1: if you're looking at this this gap between hot and
Speaker 1: cold states with people who have experienced the cravings, Like,
Speaker 1: imagine how you know, how great are the gap between
Speaker 1: people between with people who have never experienced these cravings.
Speaker 1: And I think that's that's important to keep in mind,
Speaker 1: particularly with drug addiction, when you're thinking about drug addiction
Speaker 1: treatment and policies and so forth. Well, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think this manifests so easily, and like the glib
Speaker 1: idea where people just say, like why don't they just
Speaker 1: quit or something? You know, it's just you're just you're
Speaker 1: failing to understand how powerfully motivating the cravings are. It
Speaker 1: also brings to mind and this is by no means
Speaker 1: limited to just addiction issues, but you you you sometimes
Speaker 1: see these situations where you'll have a prominent individual who
Speaker 1: is known to have once had, you know, certain struggles
Speaker 1: or addictions, and they may say something that that comes
Speaker 1: off as um as being highly hypocritical, you know, where
Speaker 1: someone will say, how can they say this when they
Speaker 1: experience this themselves? You know, how can they say this
Speaker 1: when they themselves went through uh, you know, whatever the
Speaker 1: life experience might be, that's being um brought up in
Speaker 1: the scenario. And uh, the truth is, like, it doesn't
Speaker 1: It ultimately doesn't take long at all for someone to
Speaker 1: no longer be able to relate in their cold state
Speaker 1: to what it was like being in that hot state. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: even if they personally experienced it, the gap can still
Speaker 1: remain huge. Yeah, not to say you don't remember, you know,
Speaker 1: what it was like on some level, what it was
Speaker 1: like to to have cravings, what it was like to
Speaker 1: be hungry or thirsty, etcetera. But but it's not the same.
Speaker 1: It's not the same sort it's it's it's memory, but
Speaker 1: but not the the empathy, not the compassion level that
Speaker 1: would be there if you were actively uh in that
Speaker 1: hot state or closer to that hot state. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: of course, sorry, I didn't mean to derail you. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we were talking about pain when we discussed drug craving.
Speaker 1: Because drug craving I think is in many ways analogous
Speaker 1: to the motivation state of pain. Yeah. Thank this brings
Speaker 1: us to the realm of of of torture, uh, which
Speaker 1: I realized as a heavy topic. But we're not gonna
Speaker 1: get too heavy into the like, we're not gonna talk
Speaker 1: about details of torture here for anyone who you know
Speaker 1: understanding why doesn't want to listen to that. But, um,
Speaker 1: you know, on one hand, there are several problems with torture. Obviously,
Speaker 1: on one hand, there's the false confession problem. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: on top of it being a violation of humanitarian law
Speaker 1: and a grave war crime, it's also highly ineffective and
Speaker 1: drawing out actual information from an individual. Because on one hand,
Speaker 1: you have the torture victim and whatever truth they may hold,
Speaker 1: whatever values they possess, whatever will they have to resist, uh,
Speaker 1: the you know, the inquisition or what have you. But
Speaker 1: on the other the torture has the unlimited nature of
Speaker 1: pain on their side. And this leads leads me to
Speaker 1: a wonderful quote from the Name of the Rose by
Speaker 1: on Berto Echo, and I believe this is um. This
Speaker 1: is brother William of Baskerville speaking on the nature of
Speaker 1: torture and truth, he writes, Under torture, you are as
Speaker 1: if under the dominion of those grasses that produce visions.
Speaker 1: Everything you have heard teld, everything you have read, returns
Speaker 1: to your mind, as if you were being transported not
Speaker 1: toward heaven but toward hell. Under torture, you say not
Speaker 1: only what the inquisitor wants, but also what you imagine
Speaker 1: might please him, because a bond, this is truly diabolical,
Speaker 1: is established between you and him. These things I know, Ubertino,
Speaker 1: I also have belonged to those groups of men who
Speaker 1: believe they can reduce the truth with white hot iron.
Speaker 1: Will let me tell you the white heat of truth
Speaker 1: comes from another flame. Yeah. I mean this is highlighting
Speaker 1: the difference between the incentives here, like, uh, of course
Speaker 1: tortured it does. Any pain is a highly motivating state,
Speaker 1: but it's not necessarily high highly motivating to actually give
Speaker 1: over true statements. Right, So you know, I think everybody
Speaker 1: out there pretty much is gonna fall in line with
Speaker 1: the rash now that torture is bad. Uh, torture is
Speaker 1: not something that should be used. But but then we
Speaker 1: get into the question of well, what is torture and
Speaker 1: that leads us to another article on which George Lowenstein
Speaker 1: was was one of the co authors titled what constitutes
Speaker 1: Torture Psychological Impediments to an Objective Evaluation of Enhanced Interrogation
Speaker 1: Tactics by Nord Grin, McDonald and Lowenstein. It was published
Speaker 1: in Psychological Science in two thousand and eleven. So the
Speaker 1: office here point out that, yeah, while nearly all nations
Speaker 1: condemn the use of torture, it can ultimately become difficult
Speaker 1: to define. Certainly, we we can look at really physically
Speaker 1: brutal means of torture, you know, techniques that produce blood
Speaker 1: and leave marks you know that are that may be fatal,
Speaker 1: and we can say, okay, well that's torture and that's bad,
Speaker 1: and we don't want to do that, nobody should do that.
Speaker 1: But then you get into the whole realm of enhanced
Speaker 1: interrogation techniques that infamously leave a lot of room for interpretation.
Speaker 1: And some of the common examples here are inflicting bodily
Speaker 1: cold uh, you know, putting someone in a cold room
Speaker 1: not like an ice box. It's going to you know,
Speaker 1: freeze their limbs and cause frost bite and kill them
Speaker 1: but uncomfortable, but but otherwise not harmful cold, uh, sleep deprivation,
Speaker 1: and also social isolation. So we end up in these
Speaker 1: situations where someone has to weigh in, like somebody's saying
Speaker 1: we should do this with people, and someone else is
Speaker 1: going to come in and decide, well, is this sort
Speaker 1: of thing we should be doing or we shouldn't be doing?
Speaker 1: Is this torture? What level of pain are we are
Speaker 1: we dealing with? Here? And again we get into the
Speaker 1: whole problem of figuring out like what is pain and
Speaker 1: what sort of a discomfort other individuals are feeling. So
Speaker 1: based on research into the Hot Cold, Into the Gap,
Speaker 1: the authors here discussed the likelihood that anyone judging these techniques,
Speaker 1: you know, and we can easily imagine this could be
Speaker 1: military authorities, lawmakers, or or even just you know, random
Speaker 1: you know, people reading a newspaper article about about these
Speaker 1: practices and the issues around them. So anyone not in
Speaker 1: the state of said suffering and and and on top
Speaker 1: of that, but likely never have experienced that state, are
Speaker 1: therefore severely limited in their ability to empathize with the
Speaker 1: suffering individual, making them far more likely to quote underestimate
Speaker 1: that state's motivational force and intensity. Yeah, and one thing
Speaker 1: that's interesting here. I think they do make this point.
Speaker 1: Uh Is that so? So you mentioned that many of
Speaker 1: the people looking in from the outside making judgments about
Speaker 1: these practices have never experienced these states to begin with.
Speaker 1: But even if they had, the important point is, even
Speaker 1: if they had experience that stated in the past, just
Speaker 1: the fact that they're not experiencing it currently is enough
Speaker 1: for the gap to be in effect. Absolutely so. The
Speaker 1: researchers here conducted three studies on the aforementioned examples of
Speaker 1: controversial technique solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, and exposure to cold temperatures,
Speaker 1: and they also did a study on real versus simulated pain.
Speaker 1: So for the solitary confinement experiment, they took a eight undergraduates.
Speaker 1: They put them in three groups, including the control group,
Speaker 1: and one of these groups had a social exclusion mechanic
Speaker 1: in play. So basically, for a couple of these groups
Speaker 1: there was like a ball game going on, just like
Speaker 1: a few individuals throwing a ball back and forth. And
Speaker 1: for the exclusion group, it was essentially a game of
Speaker 1: monkey in the middle with the the the the subject
Speaker 1: being the monkey and never getting to catch the ball,
Speaker 1: so they would feel excluded from you know, I'll be
Speaker 1: at a very basic social scenario here. Afterwards, people in
Speaker 1: all three groups were asked to weigh in on us
Speaker 1: solitary confinement practices, and they found that individuals in the
Speaker 1: exclusion group, this is the monkey in the middle, perceived
Speaker 1: the pain of solitary confined individuals to be greater than
Speaker 1: the in the other two groups. Now this is profound
Speaker 1: because the kind of exclusion that this person would have
Speaker 1: experienced in the study is so much less than what
Speaker 1: you would actually feel in real solitary confinement. It only
Speaker 1: takes a little bit of experiencing of exclusion to change
Speaker 1: your perception of what a more severe exclusion would feel like. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: absolutely important to know the researchers are not saying this
Speaker 1: person experienced solitary confinement. Now, they just they experienced a
Speaker 1: fraction like actual solitary confinement orders of magnitude worse for
Speaker 1: an individual, but just by dipping their toes into that
Speaker 1: that effective state, they were able to have more compassion
Speaker 1: for the individuals in question. All right, Then came the
Speaker 1: sleep deprivation study. So this one, this it's always kind
Speaker 1: of clever how they end up, you know, trying to
Speaker 1: to to model these and study these. But in this one,
Speaker 1: they tested this out on a hundred and nine part
Speaker 1: time NBA night course students, giving the questionnaire on this
Speaker 1: practice to one group before the night class and the
Speaker 1: other after the night class, believing that the fatigue on
Speaker 1: these already fatigued students who worked day jobs would be
Speaker 1: greater following the class, and ultimately they found that fatigued
Speaker 1: individuals are the ones that take the questionnaire at the
Speaker 1: end of the class found sleep deprivation or they judge
Speaker 1: sleep deprivation to be more painful. They saw it as
Speaker 1: a more severe tactic. Yeah. Again, so you don't even
Speaker 1: have to get anywhere close to the level of sleep
Speaker 1: deprivation that could be arguably called torture here in order
Speaker 1: for it to sort of shift your perception, you know,
Speaker 1: to change to take you out of at least that
Speaker 1: cold state. All right. The third one here, and I
Speaker 1: think this one was perhaps the most interesting. Uh. This
Speaker 1: one deals with with cold cold situations cold rooms. Um,
Speaker 1: and this is where we bust out the basins of
Speaker 1: cold water. So this one, they had seventy three university
Speaker 1: students put their arms in either cold water or room
Speaker 1: temperature water and then they bust out the questionnaires. So
Speaker 1: there's one group where you know, there there they put
Speaker 1: their arm in the cold water, and then afterwards they're
Speaker 1: immediately given a questionnaire about uh, you know, inmates and
Speaker 1: individuals being forced to be in a cold room. Okay.
Speaker 1: And then there's another group where they get out of
Speaker 1: the they have their arm in room temperature water, and
Speaker 1: then they're given the questionnaire. And then there's this third
Speaker 1: group where uh, so bear with me, they put their
Speaker 1: arm in the cold water, and then immediately afterwards they're
Speaker 1: given a questionnaire about some unrelated topic, and then ten
Speaker 1: minutes later they're given the cold questionnaire. And so the
Speaker 1: the interesting thing here is there's yes, the results were
Speaker 1: consistent with the hot cold empathy gap. Cold students were
Speaker 1: more likely to judge cold conditions is more severe. But
Speaker 1: if their question just ten minutes out then the then
Speaker 1: this results in the return to the full gap of
Speaker 1: empathy that's found in the room temperature water into duals. Wow,
Speaker 1: ten minutes in the gap already rewidens to its regular aperture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: momentary distraction by another questionnaire in like ten minutes time,
Speaker 1: that's enough to to to make you completely to a
Speaker 1: certain extent, like you, you lose any empathetic advantage that
Speaker 1: you gained by having that mild experience. And finally, in
Speaker 1: this particlarticular study, they did this real versus simulated pain
Speaker 1: study and I'm not going to go into the details
Speaker 1: on this, but basically, they just wanted to make sure
Speaker 1: that this wasn't due to people experiencing the pain and
Speaker 1: then overestimating the pain experienced by others. They didn't suspect
Speaker 1: this would be the case, but they did a brief
Speaker 1: experiment to sort of drive that home and um, you know,
Speaker 1: and sort of firm up what they were looking at here,
Speaker 1: and their findings backed up the notion that no, it's
Speaker 1: underestimation of pain on the part of the pain for
Speaker 1: each judges. Yeah. So I think the hot cold empathy
Speaker 1: gap is is very well demonstrated by by a lot
Speaker 1: of experimental evidence. It seems really clear that this is
Speaker 1: is a pretty much core feature of human brains, is
Speaker 1: that like when we're in that calm, cold state, we
Speaker 1: we don't fully appreciate how we're going to think and
Speaker 1: how we're going to act once we're in some kind
Speaker 1: of hot state. And this clearly has very significant implications
Speaker 1: for our lives, So it makes me think what could
Speaker 1: really be done about it? Um, So I was looking
Speaker 1: around for for things about I don't know, counteracting the
Speaker 1: hot cold empathy gap. There are some ways in which
Speaker 1: it seems like it's hard to actually close the gap
Speaker 1: without being in the hot situation yourself at the moment
Speaker 1: you're thinking, so, maybe a better way to deal with
Speaker 1: the gap is to acknowledge the gap will be there
Speaker 1: and take precautions in advance, instead of trying to close
Speaker 1: it in a way that's ultimately not really possible. So,
Speaker 1: for example, one thing it seems like you can do
Speaker 1: is um if you want the preferences that you prioritize
Speaker 1: while you're in a cold state to prevail later, you
Speaker 1: can't just trust that hot you tend an hour down
Speaker 1: the road is going to stick to them. Instead, you
Speaker 1: want to try to put like external measures in place
Speaker 1: while you're in a cold state that will limit your
Speaker 1: ability to make unfortunate decisions while you're in a hot state.
Speaker 1: For instance, there are cupcakes around. You don't want to
Speaker 1: eat the cupcakes, but you've got to realize that hot
Speaker 1: you is going to want to eat the cupcakes. So
Speaker 1: the best thing cold you can do is get rid
Speaker 1: of all the cupcakes, right and give them away. Yes,
Speaker 1: get get them out of your reach. And so it's
Speaker 1: not enough to say like, Okay, I'll just remember not
Speaker 1: to eat them when I'm ungry later that you think
Speaker 1: that's gonna work, but it doesn't. But you can remove
Speaker 1: them from your vicinity. There was another sort of counter
Speaker 1: measure idea that I came across, actually, so after we
Speaker 1: decided to do this, I discovered there was a Hidden
Speaker 1: Brain episode also talking about the hot cold uh empathy gap.
Speaker 1: This was from a few years back. I think it
Speaker 1: was called In the Heat of the Moment, and that
Speaker 1: focused on a lot of different aspects. I tried to
Speaker 1: keep most of the stuff we talked about different than that,
Speaker 1: so that if you want to listen to both episodes,
Speaker 1: they'll they'll be different things. Uh So, a lot of
Speaker 1: interesting stuff they talk about in that one too. But
Speaker 1: there is one thing they get into that I didn't expect,
Speaker 1: and it was army training. And the idea is basically
Speaker 1: that in a lot of armed forces training, essentially what
Speaker 1: you're trying to do is establishing habits and routines of
Speaker 1: behavior that you will follow when you're in a high
Speaker 1: stress situation such as the heat of battle, and that
Speaker 1: the nature of training for the armed forces is often
Speaker 1: creating high stress situations that are not actually life and
Speaker 1: death but kind of simulating those life and death situations
Speaker 1: with high stress training, so that when you're actually in
Speaker 1: a high stress situation with life and death stakes, the
Speaker 1: the affect influenced decision making that you have to do
Speaker 1: is actually very minimal. There's not a lot of momentary
Speaker 1: judgment involved. Instead, you've follow habits and routines that you
Speaker 1: have practiced over and over in advance. And that seems
Speaker 1: like an interesting response to me, Like you you sort
Speaker 1: of simulate a hot state that you know you will
Speaker 1: encounter in the future, and you practice, you practice what
Speaker 1: you do in that state over and over, so that
Speaker 1: when you're actually in that state, you have a habit
Speaker 1: to follow instead of a decision to make. Does that
Speaker 1: make sense? Yeah? Yeah, I mean it's kind of like,
Speaker 1: you know, I've encountered encountered this before. Like it's one
Speaker 1: thing to know that you should maybe do a breathing
Speaker 1: exercise if you are if you were in a hot state.
Speaker 1: Let's say you get a bit a bit stressed or angry. Uh,
Speaker 1: but you can't really trust hot you to decide to
Speaker 1: do the breathing exercise. Like my or at least my
Speaker 1: experience with myself, is that if I get into to
Speaker 1: an anxious anxious mindset or an angry mindset, I'm probably
Speaker 1: not going to be like, hold on, I should do
Speaker 1: a breathing exercise. But if you yourself in the habit
Speaker 1: of it, you know, that's that's where the benefit lies.
Speaker 1: Like this is just this is not something I am
Speaker 1: going to choose to do if the situation is right,
Speaker 1: this is something I will do this, Uh if I
Speaker 1: fall into one of these states. Yeah, exactly, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: And I think that there's probably a lot to be
Speaker 1: gained from sort of generalizing that sort of response. If
Speaker 1: there's a way that you know it would be best
Speaker 1: for you to react with when you're in a familiar
Speaker 1: hot state where you often might might do something that's
Speaker 1: disend vantageous to you or something you wish you hadn't
Speaker 1: done later, to sort of try to simulate that state
Speaker 1: when you're not actually in it, and practice practice something
Speaker 1: that you will do habitually as a response, and in general,
Speaker 1: just be prepared for the hot state, um with like
Speaker 1: with the hangar situation, for example, Like, it's really easy
Speaker 1: in the cold uh state to just assume you're not
Speaker 1: going to need that snack, But yeah, maybe you should
Speaker 1: just go ahead and pack the snack anyway, have something
Speaker 1: on hand, because you know what's gonna happen. You know
Speaker 1: how this is gonna end. I've been through an extensive
Speaker 1: carrot stick munching regimen to prepare me for this moment.
Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna go and wrap it up there,
Speaker 1: But obviously we'd love to hear from everyone out there.
Speaker 1: What are your experiences with the hot cold empathy gap? Um?
Speaker 1: You know what, what scenarios have you found yourself in?
Speaker 1: What what tips do you have for for dealing with it?
Speaker 1: What are some other ramifications of it applications as well
Speaker 1: that we didn't get into in this episode that you
Speaker 1: might want to bring up. We'll email us about it
Speaker 1: and we'll we'll chat about it. We may even chat
Speaker 1: about it on Mondays. That's our listener Manil episode and
Speaker 1: the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. We have
Speaker 1: core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Short Form Artifact or
Speaker 1: Monster Fact on Wednesday and on Fridays, we do Weird
Speaker 1: how Cinema. That's our time to set aside most serious
Speaker 1: concerns and just talk about a strange film. Huge thanks
Speaker 1: as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 1: feedback this episode or any other, to suggest topic for
Speaker 1: the future, or just to say hello, you can email
Speaker 1: us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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