8 Intrapersonal Communication, Social Cognition, and Imagined Interactions James M. Honeycutt Kenneth S. Zagacki Renee Edwards An assumption guiding much communication research is that communication behavior is accompanied by social cognition. It is clear, for example, that social actors focus on and organize on- going communicative interaction (Duval & Wicklund, 1972; Snyder, 1974, 1979; Taylor & Fiske, 1978; Turner, 1978). Likewise, communicators appear to actively construct their realities by employing cognitive attitude structures (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975), implicit theories (Heider, 1958; Jones & Davis, 1965; Kelly, 1955; Piaget, 1932; Schutz, 1932; Wegner & Val- lacher, 1977), cognitive scripts/schemas (Schank & Abelson, 1977; Shweder, 1975; Tesser, 1978; Tversky & Kahneman, 1980) and procedural records (Greene, 1984). Researchers have also explored how communicators monitor various situational stimuli, matching message strategies to situational constraints prior to message sending (McLaughlin, Cody & O'Hair, 1983; Sillars, 1980). Other researchers have explored the role of social cogni- tion during deception (Greene, O'Hair, Cody, & Yen, 1985), ini- tial interaction (Douglas, 1984), persuasion (Smith, 1982) and group decision-making (Poole, 1983). While this research has added to our general understanding of social cognition and its relationship to message production, interpretation and storage, little is known about the content of mental events which precede and follow communicative en- counters. The present article attempts to extend current thinking by considering the role of "imagined interactions" in ( 1) message selection and interpretation, and in (2) interpersonal relation- ships. We suggest that the concept of imagined interactions cap- tures a dimension of "intrapersonal" communication processes qualitatively different from those discussed in present models. To advance our discussion, the first part of this essay defines the notion of imagined interactions and suggests its relationship to intrapersonal communication. Various theoretical issues concern- ing imagined interactions are also considered, such as the role of imagined interactions in the development of cognitive struc- tures. The second part summarizes methodological procedures used to collect imagined interaction data. The third part presents some research questions and reports the results and im- plications of our initial studies.