Three quasi-experimental studies were conducted to investigate the relationship between the evaluative (i.e., agree/true) and the meta-cognitive (i.e., understand) response, and to determine which type of response people are more likely to provide when responding to one-sentence assertive statements. In Studies 1 and 2, participants performed two separate tasks in which they were asked to indicate the levels of: (i) understanding and (ii) agreement / perceived truthfulness of 126 one-sentence statements. The results indicated that participants were likely to provide a negative evaluative response (i.e., disagree/false) to a statement that they did not understand. In Study 3, participants were asked to evaluate the same 126 statements and choose between four response options: agree, disagree, understand, do not understand. The results indicated that people are more likely provide an evaluative response regardless of the understandability of a statement. The results of these studies are discussed in relation to (i) pragmatic perspective of how people infer speakers’ meaning, and (ii) cognitive processes underlying evaluative and meta-cognitive response.