ABSTRACT
T he close interdependence between social thinking and communication has long been recognized by writers and philosophers. Indeed, much of social philosophy from Plato to Kant consists of speculations about the interdependence between mental life and social life. Several classical social theorists such as Cooley, Mead, James, and Lewin have focused on this issue, investigating the close interdependence between symbolic mental processes and strategic communication and interaction. Despite repeated claims for the importance of studying language in social psychology (e.g., Forgas, 1983, 1985; Krauss & Fussell, 1996; Moscovici, 1972; Semin, 1996; Smith, 1983), social cognition and research on language have developed relatively independently of each other in empirical psychology (Bradac & Giles 2005; Semin & Fiedler, 1992). Yet language has always been an essential part of social psychology (Strack & Schwarz, 1992), and language lies at the heart of mainstream laboratory experiments as well. As in everyday life, participants in every experiment must also follow the cooperative principle in interpreting the experimenter's messages (Strack & Schwarz, 1992; Schwarz, Strack, Hilton, & Naderer, 1991).
