A self‐report instrument, a test of Predispositions toward Verbal Behavior, was designed to measure the cognitive orientation that persons hold toward the extent of their verbal participation in social settings. A word association task was devised to test correspondence among self reports of verbal activation, interaction patterns, and subsequent social attributions. Results showed a significant linear trend among levels of verbal activation and (1) duration of verbal responses, (2) number of words per response, and subjects’ subsequent impressions of (3) their own verbal activity and (4) interviewer understanding of what they had said.