The dark side of trust: Conceptualizing and measuring types of communicative suspicion

Abstract

This paper seeks to enhance understanding of how individuals go about making truth/lie judgments. In this paper, we argue for the existence of three distinct constructs related to suspicion (generalized communicative suspicion or “GCS,” situationally‐aroused or “state” suspicion, and lie‐bias), create and validate a measure of GCS, and provide a test of the relationship between these constructs. Results from three separate studies are reported. The first study tested the dimensionality and construct validity of a newly‐developed measure of GCS. The second study provided a replication of the GCS scale's factor structure, and further tested its construct validity by examining the scale in comparison to measures of several related constructs. The third study tested the predictive utility of this measure, and allowed for a test of the relationship between GCS, state suspicion, and lie‐bias. The results of all three studies are consistent with the validity of the GCS measure, and have important implications for future research in the area of deception detection.

Key concepts:

• Suspicion
• lying
• truthtelling
• generalized communicative suspicion
• state suspicion
• deception detection