“I would do much better!” you think, watching someone give a presentation about a topic you are familiar with. “I don’t feel like smoking at all, I’ll definitely be able to quit tomorrow,” you say with a relaxed tone, right after smoking a cigarette.
These are illustrations of the empathy gap: our tendency to underestimate the influence of visceral drives (such as emotions and cravings) on our own behaviour.
This cognitive bias often clouds our judgement by preventing us from putting ourselves in the shoes of other people, in the shoes of our future self, or even in the shoes of our past self. (the typical “What was I thinking?”)
The three types of empathy gaps
Not all empathy gaps are made equal. They can be classified based on their relation with time—past or future—and whether they occur intrapersonally or interpersonally.
- Intrapersonal prospective empathy gap. This is the inability to effectively predict our own future behaviour when we are in a different state. The smoker feeling relaxed after a cigarette and predicting it will be easy to quit the day after is a good example. Or feeling extremely sad and upset when grieving someone, and not being able to imagine that we will ever be able to feel joy again.
- Intrapersonal retrospective empathy gap. When we struggle to recall or understand our own behaviour that happened in a different state. For instance, not managing to understand how we ended up yelling on someone when we are currently feeling calm.
- Interpersonal empathy gap. The difficulty to evaluate the preferences and understand the behaviour of another person who is in a state different from our own. For example, not being able to imagine the anxiety of another person giving a speech when we are comfortably sitting in the audience.
Researchers call these difficulties to evaluate the influence of feelings, emotions, and other visceral drives the dual judgement model. They write: “Given that people exhibit empathy gaps when estimating their own reactions to different emotional situations, the dual judgment model implies that they will exhibit corresponding empathy gaps when estimating others’ reactions to different emotional situations.”
Closing the empathy gap
Because of the empathy gap, we struggle to understand the perspective or predict the actions of someone who is in a different mental state, whether that person is someone else, our past self, or our future self.
The empathy gap may prevent us from seeing that someone does not necessarily have the same feelings toward us as we have toward them, or may make us underestimate how much our feelings for someone affected our judgment in the past. In general, empathy gaps can be responsible for hurtful conversations, miscommunication, or just missed opportunities to learn from each other.
The main reason why we experience empathy gaps is that human cognition is state-dependent: the way we process information and make decisions is strongly influenced by our mental state at the time. Being aware of the state-dependent nature of human cognition and how our visceral drives impact our perceptions and behaviour is an important first step in managing the empathy gap.
- Debias your predictions. Instead of relying on your intuition to predict how your will act in the future, use actual data such as your past behaviour. How did you react last time someone brought some donuts to the office? What did you say last time your friend bragged about an accomplishment? Our past actions are better predictors than our (sometimes) wishful thinking.
- Visualise different mental states. Whether you are trying to understand someone else’s perspective or to put yourself in your future self’s shoes, make a proactive effort to visualise mental states that differ from your current one. If you’re feeling calm, project yourself: what does this person’s anger is feeling like? Try to genuinely understand their feelings.
- Detach yourself from the situation. Sometimes, pretending a situation is not about you may help in closing the empathy gap. Instead of asking yourself what you think or how you feel, consider: how would another person feel in the same situation? What would they think?
As you can see, these three methods have one characteristic in common: they are based on asking questions. Asking good questions is the single most powerful tool you can use to close the empathy gap. Practice asking yourself and others more questions to more accurately assess the impact of emotions on behaviours.
FAQs
The empathy gap occurs because we underestimate how much emotions impact the decisions that we make, causing us to leave emotions out of the equation when making predictions.
What is the empathy gap cognitive bias? ›
An empathy gap, sometimes referred to as an empathy bias, is a breakdown or reduction in empathy (the ability to recognize, understand, and share another's thoughts and feelings) where it might otherwise be expected to occur.
What is the moral empathy gap? ›
The moral empathy gap arises when we forget to take the other person's perspective and think about the moral foundations that motivate him or her.
What is the emotional gap bias? ›
Emotional gap: The emotional gap refers to decision-making based on extreme emotions or emotional strains such as anxiety, anger, fear, or excitement. Oftentimes, emotions are a key reason why people do not make rational choices. Anchoring: Anchoring refers to attaching a spending level to a certain reference.
What is the anchoring empathy gap? ›
Interpersonal bias: the empathy gap in relation to considering/judging other people's feelings, thoughts and decisions. Anchoring bias: the common tendency to rely too heavily on a particular piece of information (such as our mood) when making decisions.
What is an example of empathy bias? ›
For example, consider a court judge. Sometimes when you hear judges speak, they speak with absolute certainty that they see things clearly, as they really are. They think that empathizing with any of the people in the proceedings would just create noise, giving them subjective, biased information.
What does a lack of cognitive empathy look like? ›
People who have low empathy may excessively criticize other people for experiencing or expressing emotions in certain scenarios. Someone with a lack of empathy may also blame the person for what they're experiencing. For example, they may say things like, “If you didn't do those things, you wouldn't be in trouble now.”
How to close the empathy gap? ›
Asking good questions is the single most powerful tool you can use to close the empathy gap. Practice asking yourself and others more questions to more accurately assess the impact of emotions on behaviours.
Can empathy be biased? ›
Cognitive Empathy and Bias: Cognitive empathy, which involves comprehending another's viewpoint without necessarily sharing their emotions, can also be influenced by bias. Our biases can skew our interpretation of others' experiences, leading to inaccurate assumptions and misinterpretations.
Does empathy hinder moral action? ›
Empathy acts like a spotlight, focusing one's attention on a single individual in the here and now. This can have positive effects, but it can also lead to short-sighted and unfair moral actions.
The six emotional biases are loss aversion, overconfidence, self-control, status quo, endowment, and regret aversion.
Can emotions cause bias? ›
Emotional biases include loss aversion, overconfidence, regret aversion, and endowment, which interact with decision making. They are harder to correct than cognitive biases, but having knowledge of them is a first step toward better decision making.
What causes emotional bias? ›
Emotional biases stem from impulse or intuition; emotional biases tend to result from reasoning influenced by feelings. Cognitive errors are more easily corrected for because they stem from faulty reasoning rather than an emotional predisposition.
What are the 4 A's of empathy? ›
The 4 A's of Customer Empathy are Awareness, Acknowledgment, Action, and Advocacy.
What is hyperempathy? ›
Hyper-empathy syndrome. Hyper-empathy syndrome occurs when you are too in tune with other people's emotions and mirror them to the same intensity. In other words, you care too much. People with hyper-empathy may find it hard to regulate their emotions and may have a tendency to pick up on negative feelings.
What is the cognitive empathy theory? ›
This refers to how well an individual can perceive and understand the emotions of another. Cognitive empathy, also known as empathic accuracy, involves “having more complete and accurate knowledge about the contents of another person's mind, including how the person feels,” Hodges and Myers say.
What is the relationship between bias and empathy? ›
The relationship between empathy and bias is intricate and multifaceted. Empathy has the potential to break down the walls of bias and promote genuine understanding, while bias can cloud our empathy and limit our ability to connect.
What are the three cognitive biases? ›
Confirmation bias, sampling bias, and brilliance bias are three examples that can affect our ability to critically engage with information. Jono Hey of Sketchplanations walks us through these cognitive bias examples, to help us better understand how they influence our day-to-day lives.
What is the difference between affect empathy and cognitive empathy? ›
Empathy can be separated into two major facets. Cognitive empathy refers to the ability to recognize and understand another's mental state (part of theory of mind (ToM) or mentalising) while affective empathy is the ability to share the feelings of others, without any direct emotional stimulation to oneself (3).
