ABSTRACT
B ecause most social interactions involve routine use of language, one of the questions that stands prominently on the agenda of social psychology is of how people come to believe what they are told. In particular, it is the bread and butter of persuasion research. But we also come to believe many things others tell us without their necessarily pursuing a persuasive goal. When your neighbor brings up the persistent rain during his holidays in France, you will probably unquestioningly consider his description of the weather as accurate, and so even if you were yourself in Indonesia at the time. In such mundane examples, although the speaker is not pursuing any specific persuasive strategy, for the listener, believing the communicated information is a routine activity that constitutes the fabric of social interaction—and makes it possible. And yet, in spite of their importance to social life, such ordinary instances of belief validation have largely fallen out of the scope of social psychology. 1
