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Empathy gap 0:26
A 26-second explainer of Empathy gap, narrated over the same demo you can try yourself.
Try the interactive Empathy gap demo
What this video covers
The empathy gap is how poorly we predict behaviour - our own and others’ - across different emotional or physical states. When calm, we can’t truly feel how we’ll act when stressed, rushed, hungry or angry, so our ‘cold’ selves consistently underestimate how much a ‘hot’ state changes what we do.
Calm, you said you'd happily wait - but picture yourself already late and that patience evaporates, doesn't it? That's the empathy gap: your cold, unhurried self can't feel your hot, hurried one. It's why designs that test fine in a quiet room fall apart for stressed, rushed, real-world users - the team simply couldn't feel the state their users are in.
