How do people in marriage relationships detect deception?

Deceptive communication has been a study since the late 1960’s-70’s (Miller, et al., 1986, p. 496). Over the years deception detection has been a focus for research in the field of communication (Park, et al., 2002, p. 144). This paper will show the qualitative and quantitative methods used to research the problem statement involving detecting deception in marriages, past research done, discuss what methods were used by past researchers to study this topic as well as related topics, and future research possibilities. 

A vast amount of research has been done by researchers regarding deception detection, and deception. Researchers have studied how people can detect lies in general (Park, et al., 2002; Anderson, et al., 1997) to the accuracy in detecting deception (Burgoon, et al., 1994, p. 303). Others have looked at interrogators and observers and their ability to decipher between truth tellers and liars (Granhag & Stromwall, 2001, p. 603). Deception in romantic and close relationships has been examined (Boon & McLeod, 2001, p. 463; Peterson, 1996, p. 279; Cole, 2001, p. 107; Miller, et al., 1986, p. 495) as well as a study done “determining the difference in the degree to which deception occurs in heterosexual versus homosexual/bisexual intimate relationships” (Burdon, 1996, p. 77). Deception detection in a marriage setting has been ignored, but others have studied marriage in terms of marital partners’ perceptions of marital maintenance strategies (Baxter & Dindia, 1990, p. 187).