The expression you misread may have belonged to a thought that had nothing to do with you.

Faces get read as though they were addressed to you. A flat expression across a room, a delayed reply, somebody frowning while you speak: each is taken as a message about you, when the person is far more likely to be thinking about a bill, a diagnosis, or a conversation from this morning. Most of what you see on other people has nothing to do with you. Self-reference is the cheapest available explanation and usually the wrong one.

When you catch yourself decoding somebody’s face, ask what else could be true. Where it matters, a direct question costs less than a week of interpretation.