Suspicious Receivers’ Goals and Behaviors 14
suspicious receiver would weigh the effectiveness of a strategy against the possible relational
damage the strategy may cause, as he or she selects one’s behavioral strategy. To investigate the
link between a suspicious receiver’s interaction goals and strategic behaviors, following research
question is proposed:
RQ4. What are the relationships between suspicious receivers’ goals and behaviors?
Method
Participants
Seventy-five undergraduate students from a large Western unicversity participated in the
study. The overall mean age of participants was 22.26 (SD = 4.11). Females comprised 68.5% of
the sample. The study limited participation to the people who were currently in a dating
relationship. On average, participants have known their dating partner for 30.90 months (SD =
25.98) and have been dating as a couple for 20.01 months (SD = 21.27). Participants were asked
to recall an event that they experienced suspicion on their relational partner. Two people reported
that they were never suspicious on their partner and, thus, their responses were excluded from
further analysis. The rest of the participants described the specific behaviors that they deployed
as they experienced suspicion and the goals for engaging in such behaviors. Participants also
provided information about the level of uncertainty, outcome involvement, and emotion.
Instrumentation
Recollection of the suspicion-arousing event. Participants were asked to recall a recent
event in which they became suspicious about their dating partner’s truthfulness. Direction was
given about the definition of suspicion in order to distinguish it from the discovery of deception.
It was clarified that one is not sure whether the partner is being truthful in suspicion, while one
knows for sure that the partner is not truthful in the discovery of deception. Participants
answered to an open-ended question by providing the detailed description of the event.
Convention