How do you distinguish between fear and anger?

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Since young, I often offend people because I can't tell whether people are frightened or angry unless they tell me to my face. I did ask a NT for advice. She replied, "Oh, people usually whisper when they are frightened but scream when they are angry." But then, I've met people who scream when they are frightened. (E.g. Some people scream whenever they spot cockroaches/lizards/rats...) I've also met people who whisper when they are angry. I believe that I must have mixed the non-verbal cues for fear up with the non-verbal cues for anger. In my opinion, non-verbal cues for fear and anger are so alike. For example, when I'm frightened, I grit my teeth, when I'm angry, I grit my teeth too.

Context.

Fear is usually wide round eyes like this and anger is pressed lips and a wrinkled brow and slightly squinted eyes.. let me get you some links to pictures...

Fear

Fear

Anger

Anger

If you google "anger" you get pictures of people screaming mad. This type of anger is pretty rarely encountered irl, in my experience, because most people hide this type of emotion and the people who get screaming mad are considered to have anger issues. But I can definately see how the screaming fear and screaming mad can look similar. Not sure exactly how to help you distinguish that one... it has to do with the look in their eyes but I imagine that must be near impossible for an aspie to understand. It's not something I've ever had a problem with.

To myth: Thank you for sharing the pictures with me. "A picture speaks a thousand words" is so cliche but true.
Yup, I notice (through the pictures) that fear=wide round eyes and anger=slightly squinted eyes. Thanks for correcting my misconception that "angry eyes" are always wide and round.
To be honest, I can't detect anger in George Clooney's expression. When I saw the pic, I thought that he might be deep in thought.

In myself, it's not a problem, and it drives me to madness when others equate the two (as in, "What are you so afraid of?" when I am actually angry, not afraid.) The two are mutually exclusive in my persona. I really don't fear anything or anyone anymore. As a child I did, but I have outgrown it. When I am angry these days, it is not ever related to fear.

In others, I don't have too hard a time telling when others are in fear, if it is fear they are showing. Many, I know, do express fear with anger, but that is irrelevant to me. If anger is what they are displaying, it doesn't really matter to me if fear is behind it, because it is the anger I have to deal with. That's what's there in front of me, so that's what I deal with. I can't tell if it's fear unless they are acting afraid.

How I differentiate between the two, I have no idea. I just do. I may be wrong in my guess, but it's all I have to go on.

Clooney is kind of bored but it's also a good example of how a face looks when it's mad because of the eyebrow and lip position.
Eyebrows: Straight or gathered in the middle
Lips: Straight and pressed together

That's anger or irritation (boredom can be a form of irritation) - rage is more intense and involves twisting of the facial features in a more extreme manner.

There's often a mix of feelings and facial expressions going on. I would not exclude the frightened girl from being amazed. It looks like the object that is scaring her is something large and awe-inspiring.

Picture #1 is definately scared, though. No doubt about that to me.

The pix are good, at least the first 3 - definitely fear, fear, anger. George Clooney looks at best mildly annoyed. Or bored, as the previous poster said.

The picture of the woman with fear looks a bit "stagey" to me. If I see a spider I look fearful and scream and run away all at the same time - no time to pause and look picturesquely afraid! I'm NT. To me, fear and anger are very different. Fear feels more primal, instantaneous, not something I can control much, or stop feeling. Anger rises and I can feel it rising and it will only develop full scale if I let it.

Sorry

Again, I chose the pic because I was trying to get examples of people with straight, pressed-together lips. And the picture is named "Clooney mad face"

He's not steaming mad but mild irritation is something that aspies should learn to recognize anway as this is the most common form of displayed anger until it gets too far and you're unable to diffuse the situation. No one really behaves like the child children are more straight forward. Adult expressions are more subtle. At least until they get to the point where they're going to tell you off or punch you

Like I said, the pix are good. And I agree that irritation is a common expression that lots of people try to suppress. I know I do. Nothing to do with Aspies, only the usual irritations at work where expressing full on anger is obviously not a good idea.

Btw did the "read the emotions in their eyes" test listed on one of the threads, scored 29 but can't remember whether that was good, bad or indifferent!

Hi Icyfire,
This is a very good question. Fear is easy, the source is usually quote obvious but with anger it may be very hard to pin point the source. Reason being is that anger is usually a cover up for something else. Could be insecurities, irritability, overwhelm, lack of emotional intelligence, and many times it’s just habitual – we were conditioned to get angry at certain things. It feels “normal” so we keep doing it.

Can you share more how you happen to offend people for the lack of your awareness about their emotions? If you can provide more details, maybe we can figure out together what's really happening.

Take care.

P.S. Look up Anger Mentor on Google for some anger management techniques and see which onew can be useful to your situation.