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emotion
You overestimate your future happiness based on your current state.
The 'hot-cold empathy gap' explains why you shop for groceries when hungry and purchase food you later regret.
Projection bias is a broader economic concept regarding the misprediction of future tastes, whereas the hot-cold empathy gap specifically describes the failure to appreciate how current visceral states (like hunger) impact future behavior.
Your current impulses are the most unreliable advisors for your future self.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Loewenstein, O'Donoghue, and Rabin, 2003, The Quarterly Journal of Economics
- What the check found
- The cited study is legitimate for 'projection bias', but the hungry shopping example is a classic illustration of the 'hot-cold empathy gap', not projection bias specifically.
- Confidence
- Solid, with limits
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.