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.
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).
[2] Hot-cold empathy gaps can be analyzed according to their direction:[2] They can also be classified in regards to their relation with time (past or future) and whether they occur intra- or inter-personally:[2] 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.
[7]: IV George F. Loewenstein explored visceral factors related to addictions like smoking.