This inquiry explores whether adopting distinct communicative roles (speaker, listener, observer) ends in varying interpretations. A web-based test unveiled that partakers who took the view of diverse characters in short stories differed in the way they read what the speaker meant. In most cases, partakers in the role of the listener interpreted speaker meaning in more negative manners than partakers in the other roles. This inquiry states that the directionality of the difference (negative inferences under the listener’s view) could be accounted by reckoning with affective factors.