No wonder there never seems to be enough empathy to go around. New research suggests most of us can’t even fully empathize with ourselves—our future selves, to be precise.
Scientists say this may explain why we often “chicken out” at the last moment after making bold plans.
In a paper published in the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder and Carnegie Mellon University argue that this “illusion of courage” is an example of an “empathy gap”— that is, our inability to imagine how we’ll behave in future emotional situations.
