Othello error 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 error is named after William Shakespeare's tragic play "Othello"; the dynamics between the two main characters, Othello and Desdemona, are a particularly well-known example of the error
Othello seeing interracial marriages as "aberrations" that could end badly. Given this view of "Othello", the play become especially controversial in apartheid-era South Africa where interracial marriages were banned and performances of "Othello" were discouraged. The first major screen production casting a black actor as Othello did not come until 1995, with Laurence Fishburne opposite Kenneth Branagh's Iago. In the past, Othello would often have been portrayed by a white actor in blackface or in a black mask: more recent actors who chose to 'black up' include Ralph Richardson (1937); John Gielgud (1961); Laurence Olivier (1964); Anthony Hopkins (1981), and Orson