Communicating beyond the information given can make the communicator's attitudes toward a social group more extreme.

Three experiments tested how communicating attributes of initially liked or disliked groups might create more extreme attitudes. We gave non-neutral participants information about previously unknown groups and asked them to write social media posts describing the group to others. Participants who wrote social media posts to friends (Experiment 1, = 332) or undecided strangers (Experiments 2 and 3, s = 113 and 816) exaggerated and elaborated on initial information, subsequently reporting more extreme attitudes.