Hot cognition is a hypothesis on motivated reasoning in which a person's thinking is influenced by their emotional state. Put simply, hot cognition is cognition coloured by emotion. Hot cognition contrasts with cold cognition, which implies cognitive processing of information that is independent of emotional involvement. Hot cognition is proposed to be associated with cognitive and physiological arousal, in which a person is more responsive to environmental factors. As it is automatic, rapid and led by emotion, hot cognition may consequently cause biased and low-quality decision making. Hot cognition may arise, with varying degrees of strength, in politics, religion, and other sociopolitical contexts because of moral issues, which are inevitably tied to emotion. Therefore, when an individual engages in a task when displaying cold cognition, the stimulus is likely to be emotionally neutral and the "outcome of the test is not motivationally relevant" to the individual. An example of a critical decision using cold cognition would be concentrating on the evidence before drawing a conclusion. A cognitive bias known as the empathy gap occurs when an individual underestimates their own decision making in another state of cognition (i.e. people making decision in a cold cognition may have difficulties imagining themselves in a hot cognition).