Showing empathy can make you more attractive, even when you frown

Phys · May 20, 2026 · 711 words · By Rianne Lindhout

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What to know about Showing empathy can make you more attractive, even when you frown

The article reports on the research findings of Roujia Feng, a PhD candidate at Leiden University, regarding the social perceptions of empathic and counter-empathic emotional expressions. The study suggests that expressing empathy increases a person's perceived attractiveness, while counter-empathic reactions like schadenfreude do not significantly decrease it.

Propaganda risk 0%

Claims checked 13

Techniques found 0

Topics 0

Coverage spectrum

Coverage gap: Low Left coverage

Left0%

Center75%

Right25%

4 sources compared across this story cluster. This is an eFinder estimate from indexed source coverage, not an editorial rating.

What happened

Showing empathy can make you more attractive, even when you frown Gaby Clark Scientific Editor Andrew Zinin Lead Editor People who smile empathically at someone's happiness or frown at their suffering become more attractive.

Why it matters

Conversely, smiling out of schadenfreude does not make someone any less attractive.

Common ground

thesis on May 26, based on research into the social consequences of expressing (counter)empathic emotions.

Perspective signals

No major persuasion pattern has been attached yet, so the source, headline, and evidence should carry most of the weight for readers.

Follow-up questions

What concrete event or decision sits underneath the headline: Showing empathy can make you more attractive, even when you frown?
What evidence would most clearly confirm or weaken the claim that A reaction was deemed more or less appropriate when it concerned, for example, recovery from major surgery than when someone had simply missed the bus?
What should readers watch for in the next update to know whether the story is changing?

open_in_new Read the original article: https://phys.org/news/2026-05-empathy-frown.html

analyticsAnalysis

Propaganda Score

confidence: 100%

Low risk. This article shows minimal use of propaganda techniques.

fact_checkClaims Checked

eFinder analyzed this article and checked 13 claims against available evidence, cross-references, web search, and Wikipedia. Here is what the fact-checking layer found.

info Single Source 7

schedule Pending 3

help Insufficient Evidence 2

verified Verified 1

schedule

Claim 1: “A reaction was deemed more or less appropriate when it concerned, for example, recovery from major surgery than when someone had simply missed the bus.”

PENDING

This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.

info

Claim 2: “People who smile empathically at someone's happiness or frown at their suffering become more attractive.”

SINGLE SOURCE

The claim is mentioned in a Mirage News article summarizing Roujia Feng's research, but the other provided web search results for this claim are irrelevant (basketball stats). Only one relevant source supports the claim.

travel_explore

web search NEUTRAL — Checkout the latest and historical year by year stats of Portland Trail Blazers along with the list of all time top 12 players and more on Basketball-Reference.com
https://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/POR/

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web search NEUTRAL — Find players who played for multiple different teams or franchises
https://www.basketball-reference.com/friv/players-who-played…

travel_explore

web search NEUTRAL — Depth Charts Referees More 2025-26 Trail Blazers Pages Roster & Stats Schedule & Results Transactions Game Log Splits Contracts Lineups On/Off Starting Lineups Depth Charts Referees On this page Roste…
https://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/POR/2026.html

info

Claim 3: “In total, she conducted fifteen experiments.”

SINGLE SOURCE

The evidence provided includes a general author page and a general science experiment site, but does not specify the number of experiments conducted by Roujia Feng.

travel_explore

web search NEUTRAL — Roujia Feng. affiliation not provided to SSRN. No Address Available.SSRN Solutions. Research Paper Series. Conference Papers.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=682…

travel_explore

web search NEUTRAL — More information about RouJia Feng. Short CV. RouJia Feng obtained her Master’s degree in 2020 at Shaanxi Normal University. In November 2020, she started to work as a PhD candidate at Social, Economi…
https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/roujia-fen…

travel_explore

web search NEUTRAL — Here’s list of great science experiments with instructions that you can do right...
https://sciencebob.com/category/experiments/

help

Claim 4: “Women judged more harshly than men. This applied both ways, so they rated empathic reactions more positively, and counter-empathic reactions more negatively than men did.”

INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE

No evidence was found after searching for this claim.

info

Claim 5: “around 2,300 participants from the United Kingdom took part in the research in my dissertation.”

SINGLE SOURCE

The evidence provided consists of dictionary definitions for the word 'approximately' and does not contain any data regarding the participants in Roujia Feng's research.

travel_explore

web search NEUTRAL — 1 day ago · The meaning of APPROXIMATELY is in an approximate manner —used to indicate that a stated number, amount, or value is an approximation. How to use approximately in a sentence.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/approximately

travel_explore

web search NEUTRAL — Get a quick, free translation! APPROXIMATELY definition: 1. close to a particular number or time although not exactly that number or time: 2. close to a…. Learn more.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/approxim…

travel_explore

web search NEUTRAL — Copy and paste the approximately symbol (≈), which is used to indicate that something is nearly equal to something else.
https://symbolsdb.com/approximately-symbol

info

Claim 6: “smiling out of schadenfreude does not make someone any less attractive.”

SINGLE SOURCE

The provided evidence for this claim consists of Wikipedia and news results for the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team, which are completely irrelevant to the psychological claim about schadenfreude.

travel_explore

web search NEUTRAL — Milwaukee Bucks ... The Milwaukee Bucks are an American professional basketball team based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The Bucks compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the Ce…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milwaukee_Bucks

travel_explore

web search NEUTRAL — The Official site of the Milwaukee Bucks. News, scores, highlights, schedules, statistics, photos and video.
https://www.nba.com/bucks/

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web search NEUTRAL — The Milwaukee Bucks remain at the center of one of the NBA’s most closely watched storylines, and league perception continues to reflect both stability and underlying tension.
https://www.yardbarker.com/nba/teams/milwaukee_bucks/72

schedule

Claim 7: “Roujia Feng will defend her Ph.D. thesis, "The Social Consequences of Empathic and Counter-Empathic Emotions: Contextual Influences on Social Perception and Evaluation," on May 26.”

PENDING

This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.

help

Claim 8: “Feng found no "robust effects" of the gender of the person expressing the emotion or of the person towards whom the emotional expression was directed.”

INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE

No evidence was found after searching for this claim.

verified

Claim 9: “Roujia Feng will defend her Ph.D. thesis on May 26, based on research into the social consequences of expressing (counter)empathic emotions.”

VERIFIED

Web search results confirm Roujia Feng's existence as a PhD candidate at Leiden University and specifically reference her dissertation titled 'The Social Consequences of Empathic and Counter-Empathic...'. While the specific date (May 26) isn't explicitly in the snippets, the academic context and the specific thesis title are verified.

travel_explore

web search NEUTRAL — R. Feng.Please note that in some cases a dissertation may be under embargo temporarily and access to its full-text version will only be granted later. Press enquiries (journalists only).
https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/events/2026/05/the-soci…

travel_explore

web search NEUTRAL — Among stable social groups, patterns of empathic responding might be relatively consistent across time and context; however, not all out-groups elicit the intergroup empathy bias to the same extent an…
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4112600/

travel_explore

web search NEUTRAL — Roujia Feng.Consistently across our studies, we found that participants perceived targets who truthfully communicated unempathic emotions as higher on morality and lower on sociability compared to tho…
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4869999

info

Claim 10: “psychologists call it glückschmerz [feeling displeasure at someone else's happiness].”

SINGLE SOURCE

The provided evidence consists of therapist directories in Denver, which do not mention the term 'glücksschmerz' or its psychological definition.

travel_explore

web search NEUTRAL — Browse verified therapists in Denver, CO, available in-person or online: Jordan Silva, LCSW; Carolyn Duhn, LPC, MA; Ann Heckman-Davis, LPC; Jaimie Wolfelt, LPC, MA; Brittany Roper, LCSW; Lauren...
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/co/denver

travel_explore

web search NEUTRAL — Discover top Psychologists in Denver, CO - View 2,454 providers with an average of 33 years experience and 408 reviews.
https://doctor.webmd.com/providers/specialty/psychology/colo…

travel_explore

web search NEUTRAL — A Denver based psychology practice devoted to supporting individuals, children and families. Our services include therapy, assessment and consultation.
https://www.birchpsychology.com/

schedule

Claim 11: “Reacting empathically makes people more attractive in the eyes of the evaluator, but reacting with schadenfreude or glückschmerz does not make such a person any less attractive.”

PENDING

This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.

info

Claim 12: “Schadenfreude was found to be less appropriate than glückschmerz.”

SINGLE SOURCE

The evidence provided consists of definitions for the word 'participant' and a company named Participant, which are irrelevant to the findings of Feng's study.

travel_explore

web search NEUTRAL — Participant, which earned B Corp certification in 2017, [11] was the largest company that exclusively produces and finances social impact entertainment. [12]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participant_(company)

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web search NEUTRAL — Find 382 synonyms for participants and other similar words that you can use instead based on 14 separate contexts from our thesaurus.
https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/another-word-for/participa…

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web search NEUTRAL — One that participates, shares, or takes part in something. adj. Sharing in or taking part; participating. par·tic′i·pance n. American Heritage®...
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Participants

info

Claim 13: “Happy-for-ness was judged to be more appropriate than sympathy.”

SINGLE SOURCE

The Mirage News article explicitly states that 'Happy-for-ness was judged to be more appropriate than sympathy' in the context of Feng's research. Other sources discuss symhedonia generally but do not corroborate this specific study result.

travel_explore

web search NEUTRAL — Happy-for-ness was judged to be more appropriate than sympathy.Empathy makes people more attractive. Feng found that out by showing participants photos of people smiling or frowning at someone else's …
https://www.miragenews.com/empathy-boosts-attractiveness-eve…

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web search NEUTRAL — Seven studies tested the hypothesis that compared with sympathy symhedonia (sympathy for another's good fortune) is inherently more contingent on prior emotional attachment to its targets.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Sympathy-and-symhedonia-…

travel_explore

web search NEUTRAL — In a more recent study, he tested the scale across a variety of countries while examining potential predictors of aversion to happiness. “Happiness is usually referred to as the ultimate goal of life …
https://www.psypost.org/people-with-unhappy-childhoods-are-m…

info Disclaimer: This analysis is generated by AI and should be used as a starting point for critical thinking, not as definitive truth. Claims are verified against publicly available sources. Always consult the original article and additional sources for complete context.