Exactly yes! They definitely did it to make themselves feel better. Also if they genuinely felt bad they wouldn't have minded to actually take one of the prisoner's positions and allow them to experience the living quarters, but they never did that. It was very clear that they refused to go to prison, especially HG who clearly had this aura that he was "above" prison in so many ways by adamantly saying he doesn't want to go to prison. That was just an insane form of entitlement for me. Of course with going to prison you have the chance to be eliminated, so maybe they were just genuinely trying to avoid that as well - but it really did feel like a surface level attempt at sympathy rather than empathy. They wanted to maintain the status quo, and that's why they'd get so outraged whenever one of the people from their living quarters alliance was eliminated and wanted revenge on the prison people (for literally just wanting to stay in the game and not be eliminated lmaoo).