Hot-cold empathy gaps and hot car deaths

I regularly listen to NPR’s Hidden Brain podcast. I always find it interesting, but a recent episode, “In The Heat Of The Moment: How Intense Emotions Transform Us,” made me think about the problem of kids being left in cars and dying of heat stroke.

In the cases of it being a terrible accident, I don’t fault the parents. It can happen to anyone. Unfortunately, I’ve found that there are a couple of common reactions to these stories. First, “I can’t imagine how anyone could forget their kid, I would never do that.” Second, when offering advice on how to prevent it (put the purse/wallet in the backseat, etc.), the previous statement is also met with anger toward the person offering the advice.

It’s interesting how some cognitive biases compound each other. The optimism bias is very clearly on display here (and is ever-present in weather preparedness). But I think there’s an element of the “hot-cold empathy gap” at play, thrown on top of the optimism bias.

The podcast episode tells some stories (listener discretion advised), but the gist is that our “hot” selves, in the throes of a strong emotion, react very differently than our “cold” selves that are more objective and rational. The two selves don’t understand, much less remember, each other very well. While the “hot” self is usually one that’s hungry or angry or the like, it can also manifest in depression. I have to wonder if hypnosis (as in “highway hypnosis” – going through a routine without being fully aware of what you’re doing) can fit into that category. After all, when you’re going through the motions because of a regular routine, such as driving the same route to work every day, you’re not being objective and rational like your cold self would be. You’re being automatic.

And this is where the hot car deaths come in. It seems that there are is no shortage of cases in which a parent or caregiver leaves a child in a car and routine is involved. If I don’t usually drop off my kid at daycare, and he/she is quiet in the backseat, I can see how the automatic hypnotized brain would take over, as it often does, and cause me to forget there’s a kid in the backseat. The people who can’t comprehend how somebody could leave a child in the backseat of a car are in a “cold” state, having forgotten what it’s like to be in hypnosis because they’re not in it at that present moment. It’s easy to sit there and claim that you’re above such incomprehensibly negligent behavior when you’re actively thinking about the situation. How quickly we forget how easy it is to space out; nearly every time, there are no consequences beyond “oh shoot, I missed my turn,” but it could just as easily be something far more tragic.