One reason we (collectively) might avoid honesty in that scenario is that we're afraid of a meltdown/confrontation/any kind of incident. When we're on the rece

One reason we (collectively) might avoid honesty in that scenario is that we're afraid of a meltdown/confrontation/any kind of incident. When we're on the receiving end, we all know that "ourselves" are reasonable, so we'd never get into a fight over it. When we're delivering bad news to others, we can't be so sure.