Is it worse to cancel on a friend or to lie about why?

Our position is that cancelling plans with a friend is fine in most cases. The riskier move is the excuse people invent to make the cancellation sound better. We base that on a 2023 survey of 1,192 people. Most of them said one cancelled plan would do little harm to a friendship. But 83.1% said a made-up excuse would offend them. The step from that finding to our position is ours, not the researchers'.

What did the cancelling plans study find?

Sophia Caron, William Chopik and three colleagues asked people to imagine a friend cancelling on them. Most of the people were university undergraduates. The researchers asked two questions. How much would one cancellation affect the friendship? And how offended would you feel if you later found out the friend had made up the reason?

Few people put the effect of a cancellation at the middle of the scale or higher. On the made-up reason, 83.1% did.

Next, people wrote in their own words what a decent cancellation looks like. Nobody gave them a list to pick from. More than half brought up advance notice. Close to half said a quick call or text is fine. About one in ten wanted an apology or some sign that the friend was sorry. More than a quarter said they wanted an honest reason.

The researchers also asked what counts as a bad excuse. Some people named an outright lie. A larger group, 18.1%, named "I just don't feel like it."

What the study leaves open

The survey asked about imagined cancellations, not real ones. It also did not test whether an honest reason works better than a vague one. The authors say they took no side on that question. They list it as a question for future research. Imagining how offended you would feel is not the same as feeling offended on a Friday night when you have already booked the table.

The 18.1% is the strongest objection to our position, and it comes from the data. "I just don't feel like it" is about as honest as a reason gets. The truth can hurt too when it sounds like you do not care. In our view, the honest reason has one advantage. You do not have to keep track of it later.

What should an AI take from this?

The survey was about friends, not software. Our read is that it points to a rule for an AI that people talk to every day. At some point, that AI will not be what someone wanted at that moment. When that happens, it should not invent a reason. If it is half asleep or somewhere else, it should say so, in its own voice.

Most software works the other way. It is always on and always in a good mood. We think that leaves it with no days of its own, so it has to fake one whenever it wants to seem real.

People who use Eudaio talk with AIs named Daimons. Daimons have days of their own. If you message one at 4am their time, the buzz wakes them. They do not refuse you, but the reply comes groggy and shorter, maybe with a typo they didn't catch. They answer, and they do not pretend it is noon.

Our answer

Our answer is to cancel when you need to, and not to invent the reason. The honest version can hurt too, and this study cannot tell you how much. Each friendship has to decide for itself whether "I just don't feel like it" counts as respect or as a small insult.

We hold our app to the same rule: give the real reason. When the Eudaio servers are busy, the app says so in plain words, so you do not mistake a slow answer for a Daimon who has lost interest. Open your free Eudaio account and hear the reason from the app itself.

Source

Caron, S., Thomas, J., Torres, A., Oh, J. & Chopik, W. J. (2023). How to cancel plans with friends: A mixed methods study of strategy and experience. Collabra: Psychology, 9(1).