What is a single word for a false assumption of similarity, namely through empathy?

A very similar question was asked here, but provided phrases and was worded a bit awkwardly.

I am more inquiring as to whether there is a single world for when person A feels empathy for person B which does not align with how person B actually feels. Thus, falsely assuming similarity between their feelings.

e.g. Before speaking to Tim about the death of Tim's father, John was sad because he empathized with Tim. However, Tim was actually relieved and happy about his father's death. Tim's father was an abusive alcoholic, and constantly assaulted and emotionally tortured his entire family for 30 years. John's (word) made for an awkward conversation.

edit: Misunderstanding is a great word for this, but is incredibly general without enough context. So, I guess I'm also looking for a word that is synonymous with misunderstanding, but in the specific context of empathy.

Solution 1:

My first thought was transference, but that's not quite right. I can see my self describing an individual as "transferring that feeling to the other person", but the actual word transference carries a lot of psychobabble baggage.

But looking that up did lead to an actual Psych term that could be applied for what you describe - Parataxic distortion. Gee... that's a real conversation killer.

But I do like the word distortion to match what you're describing; such as "distorted empathy", "empathetic distortion", or "empathy distortion.

The phrase "misplaced empathy" in the comments is nice, but it seems to imply "empathy placed on the wrong target". The sort of issue your describing might actually happen when there is an amount of genuine empathy existing between the two individuals in lots of other ways, but this one particular item is distorted.

Solution 2:

In literature, the phrase pathetic fallacy is used for the act of attributing human feelings to inanimate objects, and I've always felt we needed a phrase like that for attributing our own feelings to others. The phrase itself - due to Ruskin - is as good as any other I can think of.
So it's not one word, but then the hope that we can always find one word for any two concepts assorted more or less at random means that, for English at least, we'll need about 60 000 000 000 words, and we don't live long enough for that.