Frenemies: Overcoming Audiences’ Ideological Opposition to Firm–Activist Collaborations

Collaborations between organizations from different sectors, such as those between firms and nonprofits or governments, can offer effective solutions to complex societal problems like climate change. But complications arise because organizations operating in different sectors rely on the approval of different audiences, who may not view these relationships positively, for resources and survival. I show how concerns about audience approval impede cross-sector collaborations forming between firms and social movement organizations (SMOs) despite their potential societal benefits. Firms wanting to signal their efforts in support of a movement’s cause may be eager to form collaborations with SMOs. But when SMOs’ supporters and/or peers define their identity in opposition to firms—when they are oppositional audiences—collaborations do not form. I argue and find that SMOs who cooperate, and don’t compete, with oppositional peers can better navigate the constraint of oppositional audiences. Firms, in contrast, aggravate the constraint of oppositional audiences. Firms’ inclination to seek collaborations to repair their reputations with their own audiences after being contentiously targeted by a movement compounds the challenge to SMOs of partnering with the enemies of their friends. My arguments on countervailing audience effects stifling collaborations are corroborated in 25 years of data on interactions between SMOs in multiple environmental movements and Fortune 500 firms.

Peer audience effects on children's vocal masculinity and femininity

Existing evidence suggests that children from around the age of 8 years strategically alter their public image in accordance with known values and preferences of peers, through the self-descriptive information they convey. However, an important but neglected aspect of this ‘self-presentation’ is the medium through which such information is communicated: the voice itself. The present study explored peer audience effects on children's vocal productions. Fifty-six children (26 females, aged 8–10 years) were presented with vignettes where a fictional child, matched to the participant's age and sex, is trying to make friends with a group of same-sex peers with stereotypically masculine or feminine interests (rugby and ballet, respectively). Participants were asked to impersonate the child in that situation and, as the child, to read out loud masculine, feminine and gender-neutral self-descriptive statements to these hypothetical audiences. They also had to decide which of those self-descriptive statements would be most helpful for making friends. In line with previous research, boys and girls preferentially selected masculine or feminine self-descriptive statements depending on the audience interests. Crucially, acoustic analyses of fundamental frequency and formant frequency spacing revealed that children also spontaneously altered their vocal productions: they feminized their voices when speaking to members of the ballet club, while they masculinized their voices when speaking to members of the rugby club. Both sexes also feminized their voices when uttering feminine sentences, compared to when uttering masculine and gender-neutral sentences. Implications for the hitherto neglected role of acoustic qualities of children's vocal behaviour in peer interactions are discussed. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Voice modulation: from origin and mechanism to social impact (Part II)’.

Males are more sensitive to their audience than females when scent-marking in the redfronted lemur

Audience effects, i.e. changes in behaviour caused by the presence of conspecifics, have rarely been studied in the context of olfactory communication, even though they may provide important insights into the functions of olfactory signals. Functional sex differences in scent-marking behaviours are common and influenced by the social system. To date, patterns of functional sex differences in scent-marking behaviours remain unknown in species without overt dominance relationships. We investigated sex differences in intra-group audience effects on anogenital scent-marking in a wild population of redfronted lemurs (Eulemur rufifrons) by performing focal scent-marking observations. With a combination of generalised linear mixed models and exponential random graph models, we found different audience effects in both sexes. Males were overall more sensitive than females to their audience. Only males seemed to be sensitive to the presence of both members of the opposite sex and same-sex conspecifics in the audience. Females were only moderately sensitive to the presence of other females in the audience. This study offers a potential behavioural pattern associated with anogenital scent-marking that seem to differ from those described for species exhibiting female dominance, supporting the notion that the social systems co-varies with scent-marking behaviours and scent-complexity in strepsirrhines.

Intra-individual behavioural and neural signatures of audience effects and interactions in a mirror-game paradigm

We often perform actions while observed by others, yet the behavioural and neural signatures of audience effects remain understudied. Performing actions while being observed has been shown to result in more emphasized movements in musicians and dancers, as well as during communicative actions. Here we investigate the behavioural and neural mechanisms of observed actions in relation to individual actions in isolation and interactive joint actions. Movement kinematics and EEG were recorded in 42 participants (21 pairs) during a mirror game paradigm, while participants produced improvised movements alone, while observed by a partner, or by synchronizing movements with the partner. Participants produced largest movements when being observed; and observed actors and dyads in interaction produced slower and less variable movements in contrast to acting alone. On a neural level, we observed increased mu suppression during interaction, as well as to a lesser extent during observed actions, relative to individual actions. Moreover, we observed increased functional brain connectivity during observed actions relative to both individual and interactive actions, suggesting increased intra-individual monitoring and action-perception integration as a result of audience effects. These results suggest that observed actors take observers into account in their action plans by increasing self-monitoring; and on a behavioural level, observed actions are similar to emergent interactive actions, characterized by slower and more predictable movements.

Third-party punishers do not compete to be chosen as partners

Third-party punishment has been hypothesised to act as an honest signal of cooperative intent. Previous theoretical and empirical work has shown that individuals might escalate signals of cooperative intent when there is competition to be chosen as a partner. Here, we investigate the hypothesis that competition to be chosen as a social partner leads to escalating investment in third-party punishment. In the same scenario, we also consider the case of signalling via helpful acts to provide a direct test of the relative strength of the two types of signals. Investments in third-party helping were higher than investments in third-party punishment – and also exhibited a more robust positive association with audience effects. We did not find a clear effect of partner choice (over and above simply being observed) on either punishment or helping investments. Third-parties who invested more in helping were preferred as partners and were sent more money in a subsequent trust game. Third-party punishers were slightly preferred as interaction partners but less so than third-party helpers. In addition, we found that the amount invested in third-party punishment or helping was a reliable indicator of the individual’s trustworthiness: those who invested more returned a higher proportion of any entrusted amount. Individuals who did not invest in third-party helping were more likely to be untrustworthy, but the same was not true for individuals who did not invest in third-party punishment. This supports the conception of help as a less ambiguous signal of cooperative intent.

Narrative transparency and credibility: First–person process statements in video news

Journalism critics have argued that transparency about the reporting process is an ethical imperative. Convergence offers news organizations opportunities for changed writing styles that may foster more transparency, especially as they embrace video storytelling. This project used two experiments to investigate the impact of transparent language on the way online news consumers perceive the credibility of video news reports. The study operationalized transparency in narrative as the use of first-person statements and references to the newsgathering process. Subjects noticed transparency statements but this had no significant effect on their assessment of the credibility of a story or reporter. The results suggest that transparency is a distinct variable with a complicated relationship to other audience effects.