| Abstract: | Two studies are reported which examine the contribution of linguistic factors to attribute inferences and semantic similarity judgements. For this purpose a new method is developed which allows us to examine the contribution of language as a symbolically shared system. The two studies show that a substantial amount of the variance in both attribute inferences and semantic similarity judgements is mediated by socially shared linguistic conventions. The implications of these findings and the methodology for social cognition, and some models of personality and affect are discussed. |
