How innuendo shapes impressions of task and intimacy groups

Moving in and out of voluntary groups is an important feature of our social lives. We integrated theory on the functional benefits of group membership with a process termed the innuendo effect (Kervyn et al., 2012) to test how the absence of warmth or competence information shapes desire for group membership. Across three studies (Study 1a, N = 185; Study 1b, N = 359; Study 2, N = 429), we used an experimental vignette methodology in which …