Suspicious Receivers’ Goals and Behaviors 3
understanding of suspicion is still incomplete. One of the missing pieces in the puzzle of
suspicion is the suspicious receiver’s cognition. Little is known about the cognitive mechanisms
underlying the receiver’s strategic suspicion display. Also, previous suspicion studies failed to
fully explain what it takes for the receivers to be better able to detect the deception. It is a
receiver’s cognition that links his or her aroused suspicion to the behavior. Thus, there is a
significant need for communication researchers to examine the role of a suspicious receiver’s
cognition in deceptive communication.
The present study aims to explore the suspicious receiver’s cognition and its relation to
his or her behavior within dating relationship. The principal question is what the receiver’s
interaction goals are and how the goals are associated with his or her strategic behaviors in
deceptive communication. In the following sections, the previous suspicion literature is reviewed
and the relevant research areas (i.e., uncertainty reduction and relationship protection) are
applied to the context of suspicion. Through the exploratory analysis, suspicious receivers’
primary interaction goals and the various types of strategic behaviors enacted to achieve the
goals are identified. Finally, the relationship between a suspicious receiver’s interaction goals
and strategic behaviors are examined.
Suspicion in Deceptive Communication
Suspicion is a belief, held without a definite certainty, that a person’s behavior is
untruthful (Buller & Burgoon, 1996). Previous studies have found that a sender’s violation of a
receiver’s pre-conversational expectancies provokes a receiver’s suspicion (Burgoon, 1992;
Burgoon et al., 1996). Studies have shown that suspicion reduces a receiver’s reliance on the
truth-bias (McCornack & Levine, 1990b; Stiff et al., 1992) and leads a receiver to strategically
control the degree of an overt suspicion display (Burgoon et al., 1995; 1996). Although the
previous studies successfully demonstrated the significant role of suspicion in deceptive
Convention