I think I've heard of something like that. I can't quite remember were I heard it, but think it may be categorized under priming. More usefully it inspired me to think of the searching for research on euphemisms*, which looks moderately inherently relevant and got me some promising keywords. Linguistic relativity is mentioned several times, but it looks like it's just a synonym for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. It was however, enough to get me this overview of several related theories which contains some directly relevant information, and looks like a good source for keyword mining. I'll try to add some more in the morning, but its getting late here.
*This was using a psychology focused database, trying it on google scholar will get you buried in humanities stuff.
There's plenty of experimental work about how humans make poor judgments and decisions, but I haven't yet found much about how humans make poor judgments and decisions because of confusions about words. And yet, I expect such errors are common — I, at least, encounter them frequently.
It would be nice to have some scientific studies which illustrate the ways in which confusions about words affect everyday decision making, but instead all I can do is make philosophical arguments and point people to things like Yudkowsky's 37 Ways That Words Can Be Wrong or Chalmers' Verbal Disputes and Philosophical Progress.
Which keywords do I need to find experimental work on this topic? I tried Google scholar searches like "fuzzy concepts" "decision making" and effect of connotations on choices but I didn't find much in my first hour of looking into this.