Overidentifying anger and negative emotions in others

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Does anyone else do this?

It seems like unless someone smiles at least once a minute, I tend to assume they're either angry, sad, worried or some other kind of negative emotion. So, for example, today I came out of a meeting with my academic supervisor and another student and I said to the other student afterwards that I always hated meetings like that because my supervisor always seems so worried and negative. He then said he couldn't believe I thought that and my supervisor was actually really excited and positive. I'd completely misidentified it. I'm always feeling like other people are angry with me too, when actually they're nothing of the sort.

What makes it worse is that I have a sense of absolute certainty that I know that other people are feeling a certain way. Intellectually, I know I get it wrong all the time, but I can't shake the certainty that my faulty intuition gives me. It makes the world seem like such a bad and negative place.

I think your problem may be that you misidentify peoples calm, baseline expression. As an example, for some people, smiling is an indication that they are fine, while for others a simple non-expression is an indication that they are fine. Personally, I can go quite a bit of time without cracking a smile and yet have nothing really bothering me at all.

Another important thing to remember is that most people make a considerable amount of facial expressions without any real conscious motivation at all. Also, even if they are expressing some sort of negative emotion, it is very unlikely it has anything to do with you the vast majority of the time.

It is also possible that you are, at least a little, projecting some of your negative emotions onto the people around you. Unfortunately, this one is pretty much impossible to avoid, but it is good to be aware that it is happening. Maybe for you, not smiling at least once a minute is a sign that something is amiss, but that is not true for man, many people, myself included.

No, but people do that with me. They assume my baseline expression means I'm angry.

What I do do is assume, when someone seems to be unhappy, that they are mad, at me, because I said the wrong thing. It just seems to be the most likely possibility, even though once in a while they are depressed, or sick, or mad at someone else.

I do that too ! And all the time..
My mom for exemple, doesn't have much facial expressions, just like me, and I often ask her "are you mad ?", "why is your face like you're sad ?" etc.
Same with other people, even if I don't always tell them, I can't stop thinking about what went wrong.
It seems like I expect people to be smiling when they are happy or making a really sad face when they are not. Extremes, you know.

Agreed.

I've difficulty to express what's on my mind to others, thus they assume that I'm such a cynical person.
I do tend to over-identifying other's emotions, yet I manage to know what they're feeling correctly.

I think this comes from the combination of an inability to read emotion signals correctly + the subconscious survival mechanism developed from a history of people reacting negatively to social errors (or other autism-related mistakes). Intuitively perceiving all ambiguous situations as being negative is your subconscious trying to protect you from the situation - misguidedly, of course. I don't believe this is due to "projecting one's own negative emotions onto others" at all. I am a generally positive person, but because of previous experience with social failures, I panic all the time about other people being upset with me and often think they are when they aren't.

You need to try to reprogram this tendency. Try to be aware when it happens and every time it does, tell yourself firmly that as you lack the equipment to accurately determine whether your assumption is true, it is better to assume that this person is a good mood. More importantly, treat that person as if they are in a good mood. This is a good trick, because if you treat people as if you expect them to respond positively, they usually will (unless they really are angry or in an absolutely foul mood), because the social programming of neurotypical people means they will usually respond in a way that mirrors the person they are interacting with.

This is definitely the case. The stereotype of AS seems to be of someone who doesn't really make many facial expressions and doesn't express their emotions much, but I am the opposite. If nothing bad is happening and everything is going to plan, my default state is happy and I smile A LOT and laugh a lot. Someone at work told me that I bring an air of happiness with me when I walk into a room. I suppose I find it difficult to understand why other people are not like this as their baseline state. On the other hand, if I get sad or upset about something, I will show a similarly obvious response. The last time I got upset about something (fairly minor) in the office, I cried and hid under my desk. Some other people in the office finally persuaded me to come out from under my desk with lure of cake.



And so this is how I expect other people to be, I think...



I have been in so so much trouble at university in recent years with people getting angry with me and me *not* realising they are angry. I suspect that contributes quite a bit.


Thanks for the input/tips!

I've reacted with anger and hostility toward people on numerous occasion while everybody was clueless as to what triggered me to think that anybody was even angry with me at all. I also percieved people as sad if they had a calm borderline expression till I realized that its not always the case. The only way I can figure out if somebody is mad at me for something I said if they completely ignore me or scream at me. I would rather be screamed at and react to it just to be sure