ABSTRACT
Virtually all psychological experiments, questionnaires, interviews, and study techniques involve verbal instructions, linguistic stimulus materials, and verbal responding, and most theories are encoded in language. In modern societies, all consequential decisions—legislative, executive, and judicial—rely on linguistic terms and critical idioms. Some things are more easily communicated than others. These differences in communicability affect the communication content. A general bias to communicate sharable information has been shown to restrict decisions and actions in small groups. In task setting, which is typical of the division of labor in modern democratic societies, each member of a group or committee is provided with a subset of all information that is available on a decision problem. In asymmetric communication settings, involving interviewers and interviewees, interrogators and witnesses, or advice givers and clients, the providers of information are typically more knowledgeable than their communication partners.
