ABSTRACT
The idea that familiarity among sender and receiver will facilitate the latter's credibility judgments (i.e., his/her judgments as to whether the sender is lying or telling the truth) is intrinsically appealing. It constitutes the basis behind Ekman's Brokaw hazard (e.g., Ekman, 1992; Ekman & Frank, 1993), which suggests that misjudgments of credibility may be made by looking at certain cues associated with deception, which are nevertheless displayed by the particular sender, even when she or her is truthful. According to Ekman (1992), “lie catchers are vulnerable to the Brokaw hazard when they are unacquainted with the suspect, not familiar with idiosyncrasies in the suspect's typical behavior” (p. 91), and “the only way to reduce mistakes due to the Brokaw hazard is to base judgments on a change in the suspect's behavior… People are likely to be misled in first meetings because there is no base for comparison, no opportunity to note changes in behavior” (pp. 166–167, emphasis in the original). It is therefore not surprising that some scholars have explored the effects of familiarity on accuracy at detecting deception and truthfulness. However, there seems to be a lack of agreement concerning the definition and operationalization of familiarity, which may account for some of the inconsistent findings in this area of research, as Feeley, deTurck, and Young (1995) have noted. Thus, some have looked at how relational familiarity or relational development influences detection accuracy or deception cues (e.g., Bauchner, 1978; Buller & Aune, 1987; Buller, Burgoon, White, & Ebesu, 1994; Buller, Strzyzewsky, & Comstock, 1991; Burgoon, Buller, Ebesu, & Rockwell, 1994; Comadena, 1982; Levine & McCornack, 1992; McCornack & Levine, 1990; McCornack & Parks, 1986, 1990; Stiff, Kim, & Ramesh, 1992). That kind of familiarity refers to “the presence of an emotional bond between partners based on a prior interaction” (Buller et al., 1994, p. 370) or “overall increases in emotional attachment, intimacy and caring and an overall decrease in the level of global uncertainty” (McCornack & Parks, 1990, p. 110). Thus, in the typical experiment, comparisons are made between the accuracy of strangers, friends, and intimates at judging the sender's truthfulness.
