Suspicious Receivers’ Goals and Behaviors 20
Lastly, the relationship between suspicious receivers’ interaction goals and strategic
behaviors were examined by a two-way contingency table analysis (RQ4). The two variables
were interaction goals with eleven values and strategic behaviors with seven values. A suspicious
receiver’s interaction goals and behaviors were found to be significantly related, Person
2
(60, N
= 134) = 107.79, p < .001. Follow-up pairwise comparisons were conducted to evaluate the
specific relationships between goals and behaviors. Controlling for Type I error, pairwise
comparisons indicated that relationship protection goals are qualitatively different from
uncertainty reduction goals, influence goals, and affect-driven goals in terms of the relationship
with strategic behaviors. The overall pattern indicated that the likelihood of confrontation
strategy is greater for uncertainty reduction goals, influence goals, and affect-driven goals than
for relational protection goals, whereas the likelihood of issue avoidance is greater for relational
protection goals than other goal categories.
Discussion
Summary of Findings
The primary goals of the present study were to identify a suspicious receiver’s
interaction goals and strategic behaviors, and to investigate the links between the goals and
behaviors. It was found that suspicious receivers have multiple goals in the interaction and the
goals can be classified into four generic categories. As speculated, the two most pronounced
interaction goals were uncertainty reduction goals and relationship protection goals. In terms of
uncertainty reduction goals, to find out the veracity of the message was the strongest and was
followed by relational uncertainty reduction goals. The findings reflect the definition of
suspicion (Buller & Burgoon, 1996), which points out the inherent message uncertainty residing
in suspicion, as well as people’s lack of confidence on the relationship involvement (Knobloch &
Solomon, 2002) as a result of suspicion.
Convention