Suspicious Receivers’ Goals and Behaviors 1
Abstract
The study of suspicion in previous research has primarily focused on the impact of suspicion on
deception detection accuracy or the pragmatics of suspicious receivers. The premise of the
present study is that cognitive aspects of suspicious receivers must be accounted for to further
understand their active participation in deceptive communication. The present study attempts to
identify a suspicious receiver’s interaction goals and strategic behaviors and find links between
the goals and behaviors. Data was collected from seventy-three undergraduate students in dating
relationship. The results revealed eleven interaction goals and seven behavioral strategies of
suspicious receivers in dating relationship. Some qualitative differences between the goals were
found in terms of their association with behavioral strategies. Implications for future suspicion
research are discusses as well as the study’s limitations.