Othello error

Othello error occurs when a suspicious observer discounts cues of truthfulness. Essentially the Othello error occurs, Paul Ekman states, "when the lie catcher fails to consider that a truthful person who is under stress may appear to be lying" their non-verbal signals expressing their worry at the possibility of being disbelieved. A lie-detector or polygraph may be deceived in the same way, by misinterpreting nervous signals from a truthful person.

The phrase Othello error was first used in the book "Telling Lies" by Paul Ekman in 1985. The name was coined from Shakespeare's play "Othello" which provides an "excellent and famous example" of what can happen when fear and distress upon confrontation do not signal deception. In Shakespeare's Othello, Othello falsely believes that his wife, Desdemona, has been cheating on him with another man. There, upon confronting his wife, Desdemona, about her love for another, she cries and denies, all the while aware that her mien will be taken as evidence of guilt by her jealous husband. Seeing his wife's emotional distress, Othello ignores alternative, innocent explanations—like the possibility that she did not love another—and kills her, as his preconceptions biased his observation and, therefore, his judgments.

Othello made the mistake of assuming that he understood the source of Desdemona's anguish. He assumed that his wife's sobs when confronted were a sign of her guilt; he didn’t understand that her grief was rooted not in guilt, but in her knowledge that there was no way to convince her husband of her innocence.

Interpersonal deception theory is the fundamental deception that can occur between two (or more) people face to face, and is what drives the Othello error. David Buller and Judee Burgoon coined this theory after 25 experiments in which they would ask one participant to attempt to deceive another. They concluded that people often say things that are not the truth "To avoid hurting or offending another person, to emphasize their best qualities, to avoid getting into a conflict, or to speed up or slow down a relationship." Following the lead of others who study verbal deceit, Buller and Burgoon label these three strategies falsification, concealment, and equivocation. The three differ in that falsification creates a fiction, concealment hides a secret, and equivocation dodges the issue, yet all three are types of deception

Buller and Burgoon think that the Othello Error is typical of most interactions where honesty is an issue. Their theory explains why detection of deception (and detection of truth telling) is a hit-and-miss business. One could believe someone was lying when they were not, or one could believe their lies when they were being deceitful.

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