Social behavior and communication are fundamentally linked. In the short term, stable social interactions depend on reliable communication. Over the long term, social behavior and communication systems coevolve to shape the way animals look, think, and act. I will use visual communication in paper wasps as a model to explore how the coevolution of social behavior and communication influences morphology, physiology, behavior, and cognition. I will focus on two common wasp species with different types of social communication, Polistes fuscatus, which have visual signals used for individual recognition and Polistes dominulus, which have visual signals of fighting ability. Specific topics to be discussed include: how social punishment and physiological costs interact to mediate the evolution of honest communication, how communication systems influence cognitive evolution, and how cognition in turn influences cooperation and social complexity.