Anxiety and Othello's Error

In her workshop, Amy discussed the importance of avoiding "Othello's Error" when interpreting facial expressions, which Paul Ekman described in a 2004 interview:

But the emotion doesn't tell you its source. Otherwise, you'll make "Othello's error." Othello killed Desdemona because he thought that her signs of fear were of a woman caught in a betrayal. She was afraid of being disbelieved. The fear of being disbelieved looked just like the fear of being caught. Fear is fear. You have to find out which it is. That's a little disappointing, because people would like to think, "Oh, if you look afraid, that means you did it." No, it doesn't mean that; it means you're afraid.
Paul Ekman Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley

A study published in the August 2006 Journal of Personality indicates that people with anxiety tended to be faster to perceive changes facial expressions than a control group, but that they also tended to jump to conclusions about the source of the emotions more quickly as well, introducing significant errors of perception.

Interestingly, when the anxious individuals were asked to take a longer period to link expressions to possible emotional states, they tended to perform more accurately than the control. Teaching people with anxiety to take this time may be important - in the press release from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, lead author, R. Chris Fraley, states:

“This ‘hair trigger’ style of perceptual sensitivity may be one reason why highly anxious people experience greater conflict in their relationships,” Fraley said. “The irony is that they have the ability to make their judgments more accurately than less-anxious people, but, because they are so quick to make judgments about others’ emotions, they tend to mistakenly infer other people’s emotional states and intentions."