Suspicious Receivers’ Goals and Behaviors 11
the direct interaction with the partner. The present study adopts the three generic categories and
attempts to apply them to a suspicious receiver’s behavioral strategies.
Passive Strategies
An individual can attain information about the issue in suspicion by carefully observing
one’s partner. As an individual does not interact with the partner but covertly observe him or her,
the person is free from the concern about imposing or hurting the partner or risking one’s own
face (Berger & Kellermann, 1994). For example, Bell and Buerkel-Rothfuss (1990) found that
people snoop around their partner (e.g., listening secretly to the partner’s personal phone calls) to
gain information about their relationship.
In addition, previous uncertainty reduction studies suggest that avoidance can be a
passive strategy for a suspicious receiver to reduce uncertainty. When asked their reaction toward
an uncertainty-increasing event (e.g., competing relationship, deception) a significant number of
people reported that they avoided the partner or the issue rather than engaging in communication
about the issue (Planalp & Honeycutt, 1985; Planalp et al., 1988). Similarly, Emmers and Canary
(1996) found that more than 10% of the participants dated others, trusted the partner, ignored the
event, or relied on higher power (i.e., God) when they experienced uncertainty in negative
relational events.
It appears that there are implicit rules in interpersonal relationships, which emphasize
the similarity display and supportiveness in close relationships (Baxter, 1986). Baxter and
Wilmot (1985) found that individuals avoid talking about topics that might be painful,
embarrassing or humiliating to the self and/or the other. When a relational harm is expected, the
topics are declared to be taboo in the relationship (Roloff & Johnson, 2001). It seems plausible to
say that avoidance is one of the alternatives a suspicious receiver can chose, because questioning
the partner’s truthfulness risks the partner’s face and violates the tacit rule to show similarity and
Convention