The Process of Becoming Suspicious of Ulterior Motives

Abstract

We examined the process of becoming suspicious and discovering ulterior motives. Participants read about a likable behavior, then sequentially received ten cues about potential ulterior motives of the actor. Participants were asked to think aloud while they were reading. Their thoughts were coded. We expected that the general impression of the actor would gradually become more negative, whereas suspicion would first increase and later decrease, concomitant with increased certainty that ulterior motives were indeed involved. Confirming our hypotheses, we found a linear effect for general impression and a quadratic effect for suspicion. Discussion focuses on the development of suspicion as a process and on the relevance of our findings to other settings in which multiple hypotheses are entertained.There is ample evidence that most people cannot distinguish honest from deceptive behavior of others (Anderson, DePaulo, Ansfield, Tickle, & Green, 1999;DePaulo & Friedman, 1998;Ekman & O'Sullivan, 1991;Malone & DePaulo, 2001). One of the reasons why people are so poor at detecting deception is a pervasive truthfulness bias: People tend to accept everything they see at face value. Gilbert, Tafarodi, and Malone (1993) proposed that people cannot comprehend something without accepting it as true (cf. Gilbert, 1991). People do have the power to assent, reject, and to suspend their judgment, but only after they have initially believed the information to which they have been exposed. 242Social Cognition, Vol. 23, No. 3, 2005, pp. 242-256 This research was supported by NWO grant 575-12.030/1. We would like to thank Steven Fein and Laurie Rudman for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Suspicious spirits, flexible minds: When distrust enhances creativity.

“…When in a distrust state of mind, people are not likely to stop at simultaneously considering any given information to be both true and untrue, but to proceed by thinking about possible alternative scenarios in the event that the given information is misleading (see e.g., Hilton et al, 1993). This notion is consistent with research showing that people do not only elaborate more when suspicious (Chiappe et al, 2004;Hilton et al, 1993;Schul, 1993;Schul et al, 1996), but that they do so by entertaining multiple interpretations of the motives of a potentially deceitful person (Marchand & Vonk, 2005) or of potentially invalid information rather than elaborating intensely on that information within only one interpretative frame (Fein et al, 1990;Schul et al, 1996). The ability to think about multiple alternatives, in turn, is a central aspect of creative thinking and the basis for performing well in so-called divergent thinking tasks-tasks that are widely used for measuring creativity.…”

“…Rather, there seems to be a continuum ranging from more or less trust to more or less distrust, respectively. States of distrust (and trust) can thus differ with regard to their intensity and the ambiguity involved (Marchand & Vonk, 2005;Sinaceur, 2010).…”

“…To prepare for the case in which appearances were indeed not what they seemed to be, distrust is likely to induce individuals to try to figure out what the truth or a potentially hidden motive might be. To do so, people in a state of distrust appear to consider possible alternative scenarios that may hold true in the event the given information is misleading (Chiappe et al, 2004;Fein, Hilton, & Miller, 1990;Marchand & Vonk, 2005;Schul, 1993;Schul et al, 1996). Moreover, being skilled deceivers themselves, people are aware that for deception to be successful it is crucial to make the true motive as non-obvious as possible.…”

“…Even though trust is considered to be the default when there is no reason for doubt (e.g., Berg, Dickhaut, & McCabe, 1995;McKnight, Cummings, & Chervany, 1998;cf., Gilbert, 1991), trust is quite easily destroyed and replaced by distrust instead (cf., Cook, Hardin, & Levi, 2005): Suspicion is readily evoked by subtle cues of unreliability, by one single questionable action, or by an isolated instance of betrayal (cf., Marchand & Vonk, 2005). In contrast, for perceiving someone as truly and completely trustworthy or in order to regain a previously damaged reputation of trustworthiness, it takes substantially more evidence of honesty and reliability (cf., Gidron, Koehler, & Tversky, 1993).…”

Suspending judgment to create value: Suspicion and trust in negotiation

“…Incidentally, this further points to suspicion departing from distrust since distrust leads to being competitive (see Deutsch, 1958;Kimmel, Pruitt, Magenau, Konar-Goldband, & Carnevale, 1980 replaced by distrust or trust. In addition, suspicion might induce (see Marchand & Vonk, 2005) distrust in the target of the suspicious perceiver over time. Nonetheless, the manipulation of suspicion as an initial state allowed causal inferences, and was consistent with other research (Kimmel et al, 1980;also, Galinsky et al, 2008;Sinaceur & Tiedens, 2006).…”