Suspicious Receivers’ Goals and Behaviors 16
Outcome involvement. To see whether the recalled events varied in terms of their
perceived significance to the receiver, a four-item semantic differential scale was created.
Participants were asked how important the issue was to them. Responses were made on 7-point
scales anchoring with various terms indicating insignificance and significance. The items were
unidimensional and highly reliable (
= .98). The scale is also presented in Appendix.
Emotional valence and emotional intensity. McCornack and Levine’s (1990a) 4-item
semantic differential scale was adopted to measure a suspicious receiver’s emotional valence.
Participants were asked to indicate how negative or positive their emotion was on the 7-point
scales. The items were unidimensional and highly reliable (
= .97). The measure of emotional
intensity was also derived from McCornack and Levine’s (1990a) study. The 8 items (e.g.,
“When I became suspicious on my partner’s truthfulness, I got really emotionally worked up”)
were modified to describe a strong emotional sensation caused by suspicion. Responses were
made on the 7-point Likert scales anchoring strongly disagree and strongly agree. The items
were unidimensional and highly reliable (
= .94).
Strategic behaviors and interaction goals. Based on the recollection of the event,
participants were asked to provide further information specifically about their behaviors in the
episode and the objectives behind the behaviors. To avoid the confusion about what behavior
means, it was clarified that the behavior encompasses those expressing or not expressing the
suspicion to the partner. Participants answered to one open-ended question for their behavior and
one for the interaction goals by providing the detailed description of each.
Coding
Participants’ reports about their interaction goals while in suspicion were coded
according to the two categories (i.e., uncertainty reduction and relationship protection) with six
Convention