Published

1 year ago

December 24, 2024

Alice Rush

When we have an audience, it can affect how well we perform. New research has found that the performance of chimpanzees on challenging computer tasks is influenced by how many humans are watching.

The findings of the study suggest that the “audience effect” existed before reputation-based human societies, a press release from Cell Press said.

“It was very surprising to find that chimpanzees are affected in their task performance by audience members, and by human audience members nonetheless,” said Christen Lin of Kyoto University’s Primate Research Institute, in the press release. “One might not expect a chimp to particularly care if another species is watching them perform a task, but the fact that they seem to be affected by human audiences even depending on the difficulty of the task suggests that this relationship is more complex than we would have initially expected.”

The researchers set out to see if the audience effect — frequently attributed to reputation management in humans — could also occur in a non-human primate.

“Having an audience present, even one of a different species, may be introducing some kind of pressure for the chimpanzees during their task. We hypothesize that the presence of audience members could be causing stress that increases their skill in more difficult situations, or that having more familiar audience members present might cause the chimps to subconsciously perceive the food rewards as higher value, increasing their motivation and thus their performance under more stressful conditions,” Lin told EcoWatch in an email.

The researchers already knew that people are attuned to those watching them, sometimes subconsciously, in ways that can impact their performance. Chimpanzees live in hierarchical societies, but the researchers weren’t sure to what extent they might, like humans, be influenced by having an audience.

“Our study site is special in that chimpanzees frequently interact with and even enjoy the company of humans here, participating almost daily in various touch screen experiments for food rewards,” said Akiho Muramatsu, an assistant professor at Kyoto University, in the press release. “As such, we saw the opportunity to not only explore potential similarities in audience-related effects but also to do so in the context of chimps that share unique bonds with humans.”

The touch screen experimental booth seen from the outside. Chimps and humans can see each other during the experiment. On the human side is an automatic feeder, which rotates to dispense food into a funnel for the chimpanzee. Here we see chimpanzee Ai looking at the photographer. Akiho Muramatsu

Over a period of six years, the researchers analyzed thousands of sessions during which the chimpanzees completed a task on a touch screen.

In three separate number-based tasks, they found that chimpanzees performed increasingly better on the hardest assignment as the number of familiar humans watching them increased. On the other hand, chimpanzees performed worse on the easiest task when they were being watched by a higher number of familiar people, such as the experimenters.

“The chimpanzees may already know that the easier tasks require less focus to do correctly and receive food rewards, and so they could be dedicating less attention to the touch screen tasks during these easier tasks,” Lin told EcoWatch. “Additionally, based on the distraction hypothesis, the types of skills required to perform these tasks are different and may therefore be affected in different ways under pressure. For rigid, rule-based tasks such as the easy tasks in our study, performance is expected to decline under pressure based on this hypothesis.”

Does the result mean that the established relationships chimpanzees had with the humans observing them was a factor in their performance?

“The chimps’ relationship with humans in general may have affected their performance in comparison to wild chimpanzees, for example. However, their relationship with any specific humans in the audience probably would not have affected the results in this study because we have thousands of sessions collected over several years, and different experimenters and people would be present every day,” Lin said.

The research team noted that it was still not clear what particular mechanisms were responsible for the audience-related effects in chimps and humans. They said additional research in non-human apes could provide more insight into why the trait developed and how it evolved.

“Our findings suggest that how much humans care about witnesses and audience members may not be quite so specific to our species,” said Shinya Yamamoto, an associate professor at Kyoto University, in the press release. “These characteristics are a core part of how our societies are largely based on reputation, and if chimpanzees also pay special attention towards audience members while they perform their tasks, it stands to reason that these audience-based characteristics could have evolved before reputation-based societies emerged in our great ape lineage.”

Lin said the study showed that there are similarities between chimpanzee and human behavior when people are watching.

“This study reveals that chimps can be affected by audiences watching them, much like ourselves. Knowing that chimps also can be impacted by audiences reveals another way that we are more similar to chimpanzees than many people might realize. We can also feel pressure when people are watching us, but just as the chimps did in this study, we can also clutch up and be motivated to perform even better than usual in front of an audience,” Lin told EcoWatch.

How much would chimpanzees be affected by an audience made up entirely of their peers?

“In future studies we would like to test with chimpanzee audiences of various sizes as well, as we were only able to test with human audiences this time. Our results suggest that chimpanzees might be affected by chimpanzee audience members depending on how familiar they are with them, as they were unaffected in performance by unfamiliar human audience members in our study. In terms of chimp social groups, it is clear that chimps have to modify their behavior based on who might be watching them, much like we humans have to in order to maintain our social standings and reputations in our own societies,” Lin added.

The study, “Audience presence influences cognitive task performance in chimpanzees,” was published in the journal iScience.

The post Chimpanzees Perform Better on Computer Tasks When There Is an Audience, Study Finds appeared first on EcoWatch.

https://www.ecowatch.com/chimpanzees-computer-tasks-performance-audience.html

Green Living

Earth911 Inspiration: Be True to the Earth — Edward Abbey

Published

3 days ago

May 22, 2026

Alice Rush

This week’s quote is from American novelist and pioneering environmentalist Edward Abbey: “I am not an atheist but an earthiest. Be true to the earth.”

Earth911 inspirations. Post them, share your desire to help people think of the planet first, every day. Click the poster to get a larger image.

This poster was originally published on January 31, 2020.

The post Earth911 Inspiration: Be True to the Earth — Edward Abbey appeared first on Earth911.

https://earth911.com/inspire/earth911-inspiration-be-true-to-the-earth-edward-abbey/

Green Living

10 Books to Counter Consumerism

Published

5 days ago

May 20, 2026

Alice Rush

We are constantly bombarded by messages that tell us we need more stuff to be happy. The average American household contains around 300,000 items. The average home size has roughly tripled since the 1950s, and we still rent self-storage units by the millions to hold the overflow.

If you are rethinking your relationship to consumer culture – whether by choice or necessity – we’ve rounded up a list of books to make breaking up with consumerism and easier to understand which of our purchases are really necessary.

(Amazon links are provided for convenience. Your local library and independent bookstore are excellent first stops.)

Empire of Things

by Frank Trentmann

Trentmann’s sweeping 2016 history follows material culture from late Ming China and Renaissance Italy through to today’s global supply chains. He shows that consumerism is not a recent American export but a centuries-long international phenomenon, one that has reshaped households, cities, and the planet.

Empire of Things is dense but never preachy, and it gives readers the long view needed to understand what we are actually pushing back against.

No Logo – 10th Anniversary Edition

by Naomi Klein

No Logo was a movement manifesto when it appeared in 1999, and its dissection of branding, sweatshop labor, and corporate cultural takeover reads as prescient now that nearly every screen on earth is an ad surface. To take the next step, pair this read with Klein’s more recent argument about capitalism and ecological collapse, How To Change Everything.

The Conscious Closet

by Elizabeth L. Cline

Cline first exposed the human and environmental costs of fast fashion in Overdressed (2012). The Conscious Closet is the practical follow-up: how to clean out, repair, swap, and rebuild a wardrobe without funding the industry that produces an estimated 92 million tons of textile waste each year. It is the most actionable book on this list for anyone with a closet.

The Myths of Happiness

by Sonja Lyubomirsky

Psychology professor Sonja Lyubomirsky brings the receipts. In The Myths of Happiness, she walks through decades of research showing that material milestones — the raise, the upgrade, the bigger house — produce short bursts of satisfaction that fade quickly. What actually sustains wellbeing is rarely for sale. A clarifying read for anyone tempted to outshop their way to contentment.

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

by Jenny Odell

Waste is coming for our minds, too. Odell argues that our scarcest resource is attention — and that the platforms we use have turned it into the raw material of a trillion-dollar industry. How to Do Nothing is not a digital-detox manual; it is a case for reclaiming attention as a political act, with consequences for everything from bird-watching to civic life. More relevant in 2026 than when it was published in 2019.

Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

by Jason Hickel

Economic anthropologist Jason Hickel makes the case that endless GDP growth is incompatible with a livable planet, and that “green growth” is mostly a marketing exercise. Less Is More (2020) traces 500 years of capitalism and lays out what a degrowth economy could actually look like — one organized around human and ecological flourishing rather than perpetual expansion. The book has helped move degrowth from the margins of academia into the mainstream of the climate debate.

The Day the World Stops Shopping

by J.B. MacKinnon

Journalist J.B. MacKinnon designed The Day the World Stops Shopping (2021) as a thought experiment — what would happen if global consumption dropped by 25%? — and then watched the pandemic run a version of the experiment in real time. He travels from Namibian hunter-gatherer communities to American big-box retail, talking to economists, ecologists, and CEOs. The result is one of the most readable accounts of why we shop, why we cannot easily stop, and what we would gain if we did.

Consumed: The Need for Collective Change

by Aja Barber

Writer and consultant Aja Barber connects fashion, colonialism, and climate in Consumed (2021), a debut that has become a touchstone for the ethical fashion conversation. Where Cline writes as a practitioner, Barber writes as a systems critic, tracing the textile trade’s roots in slavery and racial inequality and asking readers to confront why we fill emotional gaps with purchases. Pointed, generous, and built to be read in two sittings.

Wasteland: The Secret World of Waste and the Urgent Search for a Cleaner Future

by Oliver Franklin-Wallis

If consumerism is the input, waste is the output we work hardest not to see. Award-winning journalist Oliver Franklin-Wallis follows that output across continents in Wasteland (2023) — from New Delhi’s landfills and Ghana’s secondhand clothing markets to nuclear storage sites and the corporate origins of curbside recycling. Named a Best Book of 2023 by The New Yorker, The Guardian, and Kirkus, it is essential reading for anyone who has ever wondered where “away” actually goes.

Fixation: How to Have Stuff Without Breaking the Planet

by Sandra Goldmark

Sandra Goldmark runs a pop-up repair shop in New York and serves as director of sustainability at Barnard College. Fixation (2020) is her plainspoken case for getting things fixed instead of replaced, and for building a circular economy where good design, reuse, and repair are the default. Her five-rule formula — borrowed in spirit from Michael Pollan — is the most quotable advice on this list: “Have good stuff. Not too much. Mostly reclaimed. Care for it. Pass it on.”

What You Can Do

Reading is a start, not a finish. A few next steps:

Start at the library. Most of these titles are available through WorldCat or your local branch. Borrowing keeps a book in circulation and out of a landfill.
Audit one category of stuff before adding to it. Pick clothes, kitchenware, or electronics. Inventory what you already own before the next purchase. Most of us own more than we remember.
Find a repair option in your community. Take the time to locate repair, reuse, and donation outlets near you before tossing anything broken.
Support right-to-repair policy. Several U.S. states have passed right-to-repair laws since 2023; the rest are weighing them. Individual purchasing choices matter more when manufacturers are required to make repair possible.
Read one of these books and talk about it. Anti-consumption is harder alone. Book clubs, mutual-aid groups, and faith communities have all become surprising hubs for this work.

Editor’s Note: Originally authored by Gemma Alexander on June 18, 2020, this article was updated in May 2026.

The post 10 Books to Counter Consumerism appeared first on Earth911.

https://earth911.com/inspire/10-books-to-counter-consumerism/

Green Living

Best of Sustainability In Your Ear: EarthX CEO Peter Simek on Cultivating Bipartisan Climate Strategies

Published

5 days ago

May 20, 2026

Alice Rush

Subscribe to receive transcripts by email. Read along with this episode.

For 15 years, the Dallas-based climate conference the EarthX conference has created space where fossil fuel executives and environmental activists, Republican appropriations chairs and Democratic climate hawks, find common ground. The organization targets three core stakeholders: the corporate world, policymakers, and investors seeking startups where environmental solutions are baked into the bottom line. Peter Simek, EarthX’s CEO, explains how reframing climate action around shared values—stewardship, economic opportunity, and love of the land—unlocks support that crisis messaging alone cannot reach.

The doom story doesn’t sell, Simek explained. “We’re not motivated as a species by doomsday language. It puts people in fight-or-flight mode.” He points out how climate became an identity issue, tangled up in culture-war debates over hamburgers and gas-powered trucks, when the real conversation should center on clean air, clean water, and protecting the places we love. “The EPA and the Clean Air and Clean Water Act were passed during the Nixon administration,” he notes. “There are ways to message this that appeals across lines.”

Peter Simek, CEO of EarthX, is our guest on *Sustainability In Your Ear*.

Simek bets heavily on bottom-up action as EarthX works to build bridges. States, cities, and private capital often move faster than federal mandates, he argues, and they’re harder to reverse with a single executive order. Texas leads the nation in renewable energy deployment because wind and solar make bottom-line sense. “Even as there’s a policy turn against it, there’s still the driving reality that solar and wind are viable energy sources,” he says. A new event in 2026, the EarthX Institute, will focus on two policy priorities: nuclear energy, where bipartisan consensus is growing, and urban biodiversity.

Whether conversations at forums like EarthX translate into policy velocity that matches the pace of climate impacts remains to be seen. Simek says he stays focused on tracking downstream results, specifically the investments funded, the coalitions built, and the policies incubated from the local level up. “It’s about finding those ways in which there’s common sense, common ground, common values,” he says. “Elements to talking about nature and the environment that no one can really disagree with.”

Learn more about EarthX and its upcoming April 2026 conference at earthx.org.