Dealing with deceptions that are difficult to detect: Encoding and judgment as a function of preparing to receive invalid information

This paper explores how receivers cope in situations of unfocused suspicion, situations in which (i) they are about to receive information from several sources, (ii) they suspect some of it is invalid, but (iii) during encoding they cannot reliably distinguish the invalid from the valid. Results from four experiments suggest that suspicious individuals elaborate on the messages they receive more than unsuspicious individuals. We propose that suspicious individuals prepare to cope with potentially invalid information by entertaining multiple interpretations of the informations. In contrast, unsuspicious individuals analyze messages within a single interpretive frame. The costs and benefits associated with such preparatory strategy and its limiting conditions are discussed.