Is honesty the best policy? Why people prefer false empathy over truthful unempathy

Literature of person perception suggests the primacy of morality over sociability in interactions. While theories of emotion highlight the importance of adhering to socially acceptable display rules, a contentious debate surrounds whether individuals prioritize moral or sociable communication of emotions. We investigated how people perceive and respond to others who falsely communicate empathic versus truthfully communicate unempathic emotions related to others' (mis)fortunes. Across five preregistered studies ( N = 1305), we examined participants' perceptions (sociability, morality, intent) and behavioral responses in a resource-allocation task using multiple paradigms (vignette, retrospective recall, and real-time interaction) and contexts (e.g., promotion, education, and lottery scenarios). Consistently, participants perceived targets who falsely communicated empathic emotions as lower on morality but higher on sociability and having more positive intent than those who truthfully communicated unempathic emotions. Moreover, despite the mixed findings regarding overall impressions, participants were consistently more willing to interact with and allocate resources to targets who falsely communicated empathic emotions. This preference was primarily driven by perceived sociability attributed to the targets. Together, these findings suggest that false empathic communication is favored over truthful unempathic communication, highlighting the relative primacy of sociability (and perceived intent) over morality in shaping responses to emotional communication in the context of others' (mis)fortunes.