Attrition Contest Exit Design

batch: Batch 13

canonical_family: Staged Processes & Drift

slug: competition

slug: deterrence

slug: brinkmanship

slug: signaling

slug: reputation

slug: scarcity

slug: coordination

slug: cooperation

slug: deadlock

slug: threshold

slug: backpressure

slug: commitment

slug: starvation

essence_one_line: Turn a costly “who can endure longer” contest into a bounded decision with visible burn rates, exit criteria, settlement channels, and face-saving off-ramps.

compression_statement: When rivals, teams, institutions, or stakeholders are locked in a contest where continuing imposes ongoing sunk costs and the prize shrinks as the contest continues, install an attrition contest exit design: identify the prize and burn rates, expose the payoff erosion curve, define independent stop-loss and review triggers, create credible settlement or arbitration channels, preserve face-saving withdrawal paths, and convert endurance signaling into explicit bargaining, staged resolution, or bounded trial rather than indefinite mutual depletion.

core_intuition: A war of attrition is dangerous because persistence becomes a signal of strength. Each side keeps paying because quitting confirms weakness, but the act of waiting consumes the very value being fought over. The archetype breaks the loop by changing what persistence signals, making depletion visible, and providing exits that do not require unilateral humiliation.

canonical_formula: AttritionExitDesign = PayoffErosionMap × BurnRateVisibility × StopLossGate × CredibleExitPath × SettlementChannel × FaceSavingProtocol − EnduranceSignalingLoop

structural_problem: A conflict, competition, negotiation, funding dispute, queue, lawsuit, bidding contest, strike, platform fight, internal political battle, or strategic standoff has become an endurance test. Participants pay continuing costs that are sunk as they are paid, and each party hopes the other will concede first. Because concession is interpreted as weakness, loss of reputation, or surrender of future bargaining power, parties continue after the expected value of winning has declined below the cumulative cost of fighting.

trigger_conditions: The contest has a valuable prize, position, budget, territory, concession, market, precedent, or status outcome.

trigger_conditions: Parties pay ongoing time, money, attention, disruption, risk, stress, opportunity, or reputational costs while waiting.

trigger_conditions: Paid costs are largely sunk and cannot be recovered if the party withdraws.

trigger_conditions: The prize loses value as the contest continues, or the cost of winning grows until victory is Pyrrhic.

trigger_conditions: Each party has private information about endurance, resources, pain tolerance, reservation value, or willingness to concede.

trigger_conditions: Quitting is treated as a signal of weakness, poor judgment, disloyalty, guilt, lack of commitment, or loss of face.

trigger_conditions: Existing governance rewards toughness, consistency, escalation, or visible commitment more than efficient settlement.

trigger_conditions: No trusted procedure exists for time-bounding, arbitrating, splitting, pausing, or reframing the contest.

symptoms: Participants keep investing because they have already invested, not because the remaining prize justifies further burn.

symptoms: Each side privately wants the contest to end but publicly cannot concede first.

symptoms: The fight becomes about reputation, precedent, face, or not being seen as weak rather than the original material prize.

symptoms: Settlement offers are rejected because accepting them would reveal low endurance or invite future exploitation.

symptoms: The total cost borne by all sides approaches or exceeds the value of the prize.

symptoms: Review meetings focus on resolve and toughness rather than updated expected value, opportunity cost, and exit options.

symptoms: Third parties, bystanders, customers, employees, citizens, or dependents absorb collateral damage while principals keep signaling endurance.

symptoms: The contest continues through procedural delays, appeals, waiting games, funding rounds, strikes, holdouts, or escalation cycles without a credible off-ramp.

root_tension: The archetype manages the tension between credible commitment and efficient exit. A party may need to show resolve to avoid exploitation, but when resolve is proven only by burning resources longer than the other side, the signal destroys value and traps all parties in mutually costly endurance.

anti_signatures: The issue is a single actor continuing a failing project because of sunk costs; use escalation_exit_gate.

anti_signatures: The main problem is deciding whether to take an irreversible action before commitment; use irreversible_commitment_management.

anti_signatures: The primary issue is promises exceeding capacity rather than strategic mutual endurance; use overcommitment_prevention.

anti_signatures: The task is choosing among indivisible options under constraints; use discrete_commitment_optimization.

anti_signatures: The conflict is an acute amplified threat response rather than a costly strategic waiting contest; use moral_panic_deescalation or appropriate de-escalation archetypes.

anti_signatures: The contest has clear rules, bounded duration, transparent costs, and participants rationally value the prize above remaining cost.

anti_signatures: Persistence is required by safety, rights protection, fiduciary duty, or justice obligations and exit would externalize unacceptable harm.

anti_signatures: A neutral adjudication, auction, or bargaining mechanism already resolves the contest without ongoing sunk burn.

structural_intervention: Replace unbounded endurance signaling with bounded contest governance. The intervention makes the depletion logic visible, predefines stop-loss and review criteria, introduces credible settlement or adjudication routes, protects face-saving withdrawal, and changes the payoff environment so parties can exit or resolve without treating concession as total defeat.

action_logic: Name the contest, parties, prize, claimed stakes, and current theory of victory.

action_logic: Estimate each party’s running costs, opportunity costs, collateral harms, and prize erosion over time.

action_logic: Separate material payoff from reputation, precedent, identity, fear of exploitation, and face-saving concerns.

action_logic: Define stop-loss thresholds, review cadences, and continuation criteria that exclude sunk costs from future decisions.

action_logic: Create credible off-ramps: mediated settlement, arbitration, time-boxed trial, split-the-difference rule, rotating access, compensation, pause, face-saving reframing, or mutually verified withdrawal.

action_logic: Design commitment and signaling substitutes so resolve can be communicated without indefinite burning.

action_logic: Assign neutral review authority or independent advisory checks when principals are too invested to evaluate exit honestly.

action_logic: Monitor for renewed attrition loops, retaliatory escalation, and withdrawal rebound after exit.

decision_rules: Continue only if expected remaining value exceeds expected remaining cost and the contest is still the best available route to the objective.

decision_rules: Never count sunk costs as reasons to continue; count only salvageable value, future costs, and future risks.

decision_rules: If total burn rate is destroying the prize faster than either side can gain it, trigger settlement, pause, or adjudication.

decision_rules: If a party’s main objection to exit is face or reputation, design a face-saving narrative before escalating material commitments.

decision_rules: If private endurance information drives delay, use credible disclosure, bonding, mediation, or bounded trial mechanisms to reveal reservation values without ongoing burn.

decision_rules: If third parties bear growing collateral costs, require independent harm review and escalation to neutral governance.

decision_rules: If a stop-loss threshold is crossed, continuation requires new evidence, not renewed resolve rhetoric.

target_invariants: Sunk costs are excluded from continuation justification.

target_invariants: Running costs and opportunity costs remain visible to all authorized decision-makers.

target_invariants: Exit can preserve dignity, legitimacy, or future bargaining position where possible.

target_invariants: Continuation has explicit criteria and cadence, not indefinite default status.

target_invariants: Settlement, pause, or adjudication remains available before the prize is destroyed.

target_invariants: Collateral harms and third-party costs are counted, not hidden outside the contest payoff.

expected_outcomes: Earlier recognition of value-destroying endurance contests.

expected_outcomes: Reduced total cost of conflict, delay, litigation, bidding, labor dispute, internal politics, or market standoff.

expected_outcomes: More credible exits that do not require unilateral humiliation or total loss.

expected_outcomes: Better separation between legitimate resolve and sunk-cost escalation.

expected_outcomes: More efficient conversion of private endurance information into explicit bargaining or governance decisions.

expected_outcomes: Less collateral harm to bystanders, teams, customers, public constituencies, or shared resources.

Litigation Attrition Exit Design

short_definition: Use cost visibility, settlement channels, and face-saving resolution to prevent legal disputes from becoming pure endurance contests.

distinctive_feature: Legal procedure itself can become the attrition channel.

distinct_from_parent: The parent covers any attrition contest; this variant centers litigation and procedural delay.

still_same_parent_because: It uses the same burn-rate visibility, stop-loss review, and credible off-ramp logic.

use_when: Legal costs and delay threaten to exceed disputed value.

use_when: Parties reject settlement because conceding signals weakness or invites future claims.

domain: litigation

example: A court-ordered mediation is triggered when projected fees exceed a threshold share of disputed value.

Subsidy Burn Standoff Control

short_definition: Prevent competitors or internal units from burning subsidies, discounts, or budget reserves simply to outlast each other.

distinctive_feature: The attrition cost is a continuing subsidy, discount, or budget burn.

distinct_from_parent: The parent covers all costly endurance contests; this variant centers financial burn-rate competition.

still_same_parent_because: The same payoff erosion and stop-loss logic applies.

use_when: Actors fund continuing losses to capture or preserve a prize.

use_when: The market, budget, or shared resource loses value as burn continues.

example: Two platforms stop unlimited subsidies after a burn-rate threshold triggers partnership or pricing review.

Face-Saving Withdrawal Path

short_definition: Design an exit narrative and nonretaliation conditions so a party can leave an attrition contest without total humiliation or future exploitation.

distinctive_feature: The primary blocker is the meaning of withdrawal, not the material settlement structure.

distinct_from_parent: The parent covers complete attrition contest exit; this subtype handles the face-saving channel within that exit.

still_same_parent_because: Face-saving is a component of credible exit, not a separate contest-governance pattern.

use_when: Reputation or identity keeps parties contesting after material value is depleted.

use_when: A safe exit requires preserving dignity, legitimacy, or future bargaining position.

example: A department concedes budget control after a joint statement frames the change as strategic refocusing rather than defeat.

near_names:
War of Attrition Game Resolution
Costly Standoff De-escalation
Mutual Burn Off-Ramp


type: archetype

source: generated

name: Audience-Boundary Signal Spillover Governance

batch: Batch 11

canonical_family: Selectivity & Bounded Windows

aliases:
Boundary Signal Spillover Governance
Cross-Audience Signal Spillover Design
Audience Spillover Management
Signal Boundary Leakage Governance
Unintended Audience Uptake Management
Adjacent-Audience Backpressure Design

slug: boundary

slug: propagation

slug: gatekeeping

slug: amplification

slug: damping

slug: observability

slug: feedback

slug: attention

slug: framing

slug: interpretation

slug: trust

slug: externality

components: Gatekeeper and Intermediary Contact List

mechanisms:
Audience Boundary Map
Adjacent-Audience Pre-Mortem
Signal Cue Audit
Boundary Permeability Scorecard
Interpretive Context Brief
Spillover Response Load Test
Staged Release Protocol
Sentinel Uptake Monitor
Clarification and Redirect Path
Spillover After-Action Review

essence_one_line: Before sending a bounded signal, map who else will see it, how they will interpret it, and what response load or legitimacy spillover they may create.

compression_statement: Audience-Boundary Signal Spillover Governance applies when a message, rule, warning, offer, enforcement action, leak, or public cue is designed for one audience but can cross to adjacent audiences whose interpretation and response exceed the planner’s intended channel, capacity, or legitimacy frame. The intervention maps intended and adjacent audiences, signal cues, boundary permeability, interpretation contexts, amplification paths, response overflow surfaces, harm/legitimacy boundaries, monitoring sentinels, and response-capacity plans.

core_intuition: Signals rarely stay inside the audience boundary drawn on the plan. People nearby watch, infer, screenshot, translate, compare, and respond. The same cue can reassure one audience, alarm another, and mobilize a third. Good signaling therefore treats audience boundaries as porous and plans for adjacent uptake before the signal is sent.

canonical_formula: intended_signal + porous_audience_boundary + adjacent_audience_interpretation + amplification_pathway + response_overflow_surface + sentinel_monitoring + redirect_capacity -> governed_signal_spillover

structural_problem: A signal is intended to influence one audience or channel, but the surrounding audience topology is porous. Adjacent audiences receive or infer the signal, interpret it through their own histories and incentives, and create reactions that the original apparatus was not designed to absorb.

condition: Bounded signaling is attempted

description: The planner believes a message, rule, offer, warning, status cue, or enforcement action is aimed primarily at one audience.

condition: Audience boundaries are porous

description: Screenshots, media coverage, social networks, shared geography, gatekeepers, leaks, or strategic inference allow adjacent audiences to observe the signal.

condition: Adjacent interpretation differs

description: Neighboring audiences read the same signal through different trust levels, histories, incentives, identities, or local conditions.

condition: Response channels are capacity-limited

description: The planner has intake, enforcement, support, moderation, or field capacity sized for the intended audience, not the spillover audience.

condition: Legitimacy or harm stakes exist

description: Spillover can create perceived unfairness, panic, stigma, mobilization, copycat behavior, misinformation, or accountability pressure.

symptom: Unexpected demand surge

signal: People outside the intended group flood call centers, forms, offices, moderators, or field staff.

symptom: Adjacent audience backlash

signal: A neighboring public reads the signal as exclusion, threat, unfairness, favoritism, or hidden priority.

symptom: Cue hijacking

signal: Intermediaries amplify a secondary cue while the official message is ignored.

symptom: Boundary confusion

signal: Recipients cannot tell whether the signal applies to them, or infer applicability from partial information.

symptom: Response apparatus overflow

signal: Planned correction, appeal, support, or enforcement paths cannot handle the spillover response.

symptom: Legitimacy leakage

signal: The signal undermines trust outside the intended audience even if it works for the intended group.

root_tension: Selective signaling needs boundaries, but communication channels, audiences, and interpretations are porous; the more visible or salient the signal, the more likely adjacent audiences are to react as if they were part of the design.

anti_signatures: Use contextual_selective_propagation when the main issue is how a meaning or usage change should travel across contexts, not adjacent-audience response overflow.

anti_signatures: Use boundary_permeability_control when the primary problem is regulating what crosses a boundary, not planning for social interpretation and response capacity after crossing.

anti_signatures: Use externality_internalization when the main intervention is assigning responsibility or cost for spillover after it occurs.

anti_signatures: Use code_register_adaptation when the main task is changing language or register for a known audience rather than managing unintended adjacent uptake.

anti_signatures: Do not use this archetype for fully public broadcast where all audiences are intentionally included and response capacity is already scoped to them.

structural_intervention: Treat the audience boundary as porous before signaling: map intended and adjacent audiences, audit signal cues, estimate boundary permeability, anticipate adjacent interpretations, model response overflow, prepare monitoring sentinels, and size clarification or redirection capacity.

action_logic: Define the intended audience and the action the signal is supposed to produce.

action_logic: Map adjacent audiences that can observe, infer, retransmit, or be affected by the signal.

action_logic: Audit explicit content and implicit cues such as status, threat, scarcity, priority, eligibility, or blame.

action_logic: Estimate boundary permeability across channels, media, gatekeepers, jurisdictions, and platforms.

action_logic: Write interpretive context briefs for adjacent audiences, including trust, history, incentives, and local stakes.

action_logic: Identify response-overflow surfaces: demand, panic, backlash, evasion, imitation, stigma, overload, or legitimacy loss.

action_logic: Prepare staged release, scope notes, monitoring sentinels, and response redirection paths.

action_logic: After release, compare predicted and actual uptake and update the audience-boundary model.

decision_rules: Do not send a high-salience bounded signal until adjacent-audience uptake has been considered.

decision_rules: If adjacent audiences can reasonably think the signal applies to them, include scope and eligibility clarification.

decision_rules: If spillover response would exceed capacity, stage the signal or add response capacity before release.

decision_rules: When legitimacy stakes are high, consult sentinel representatives or local interpreters before launch.

decision_rules: Treat amplification by gatekeepers and media as part of the signal design, not as an external surprise.

decision_rules: Do not suppress spillover blindly when it reflects legitimate accountability or affected-party standing.

decision_rules: When correction would amplify harm, redirect quietly through trusted intermediaries where possible.

target_invariants:
Clear intended audience definition.
Adjacent audience map.
Signal cue audit.
Boundary permeability estimate.
Interpretation context record.
Response overflow plan.
Monitoring sentinels.
Harm and legitimacy boundary.
Clarification or redirection pathway.

expected_outcomes: Fewer surprises from unintended audience uptake.

expected_outcomes: Reduced panic, backlash, stigma, and legitimacy loss.

expected_outcomes: Clearer scope and applicability for adjacent audiences.

expected_outcomes: More accountable choices about which spillovers are harmful, acceptable, or necessary.

expected_outcomes: Improved learning about real audience topology.

Public Policy Signal Spillover Variant

short_definition: A policy signal aimed at one constituency or implementing body is seen by neighboring constituencies, producing pressure, fear, demand, or resistance outside the planned process.

distinctive_feature: The signal carries administrative consequences and legitimacy stakes.

distinct_from_parent: It is the public-administration form of the general audience-boundary pattern.

still_same_parent_because: The structure remains unintended audience crossing plus response overflow.

use_when: Policy messages, eligibility rules, enforcement signals, or pilot announcements are likely to be observed beyond the intended audience.

use_when: Adjacent publics may mobilize or overwhelm service channels.

failure_modes:
Panic demand.
Perceived unfairness.
Field-staff overload.

name: Market or Platform Signal Spillover Variant

short_definition: A product, pricing, moderation, ranking, or availability signal aimed at one segment reaches other users, sellers, or competitors and changes their behavior.

distinctive_feature: The boundary crossing happens through market observation, platform visibility, or strategic inference.

distinct_from_parent: It emphasizes strategic response and platform/market amplification.

still_same_parent_because: Unintended recipients interpret the signal and produce overflow effects.

use_when: Segmented offers, platform policies, or ranking cues are observable across segments.

use_when: Adjacent users or sellers can infer priorities or constraints.

failure_modes:
Strategic gaming.
Perceived favoritism.
Runaway support load.

name: Security or Deterrence Signal Spillover Variant

short_definition: A deterrent or warning signal sent to one actor is observed by allies, adversaries, publics, or copycats whose reactions change the risk surface.

distinctive_feature: The spillover includes strategic inference and escalation/de-escalation risk.

distinct_from_parent: It is the adversarial or security-sensitive form of the parent.

still_same_parent_because: The problem remains boundary crossing and unintended audience response.

use_when: Signals are public enough to be observed by multiple actor classes.

use_when: Adjacent actors may infer capability, weakness, intent, or opportunity.

failure_modes:
Escalation by third parties.
Copycat behavior.
Credibility loss.

near_names:
Audience Spillover
Signal Boundary Leakage
Unintended Audience Uptake
Adjacent-Audience Backpressure
Cross-Audience Signal Spillover


batch: Batch 19

aliases:
Public-Private Context Calibration
Audience-Effect Calibration
Reputation-Pressure Context Design
Private-to-Public Response Calibration
Visibility-Conditioned Behavior Design

slug: conformity

slug: reputation

slug: signaling

slug: accountability

components: Response Unit and Condition Specification

components: Privacy, Confidentiality, and Retention Boundary

components: Adaptation and Behavioral Follow-Through Monitor

mechanisms: Simultaneous Private Poll Then Public Deliberation

mechanisms: Confidential Interview with Bounded Reporting

mechanisms: Randomized Response or Privacy-Preserving Survey

mechanisms: Protected Minority or Uncertainty Report

essence_one_line: Compare behavior across visibility conditions, separate reputation pressure from considered preference, and design the public-private boundary to protect candor, legitimacy, and accountable commitment.

compression_statement: Audience-Conditioned Behavior Calibration treats publicness as an intervention variable. It names the decision and consequence, maps relevant audiences and power relations, defines comparable private and public conditions, gathers an independent baseline before social cues dominate, estimates the magnitude and direction of audience effects, diagnoses plausible mechanisms, selects a visibility architecture, stages disclosure or commitment where needed, protects identity and retaliation boundaries, preserves accountable records without unnecessary exposure, resolves material divergence rather than averaging it away, and monitors whether the context itself changes behavior over time. The archetype does not assume that private responses are truer, public responses are more virtuous, anonymity is always safer, or visibility is always accountable.

core_intuition: The same person may endorse, reject, contribute, report, comply, punish, help, or remain silent differently when watched by peers, leaders, opponents, beneficiaries, strangers, or an imagined future audience. Visibility can improve commitment, reciprocity, norm enforcement, credit, and accountability. It can also produce conformity, impression management, preference falsification, intimidation, performative compliance, retaliation risk, or strategic signaling. A mature design therefore asks what the decision must learn or accomplish, which audience mechanisms are active, and what degree and timing of identity exposure are proportionate.

canonical_formula: audience_effect = comparable_response(public_or_identified_condition) minus comparable_response(private_or_protected_condition), interpreted with selection, order, leakage, incentive, and measurement uncertainty; choose visibility_condition to optimize declared candor, coordination, legitimacy, learning, commitment, safety, privacy, and accountability constraints; validate with divergence, harm, adaptation, and audit evidence.

structural_problem: A decision, report, evaluation, contribution, or behavioral observation occurs under an audience condition that changes the incentives and perceived risks of expression. The system then mistakes a context-conditioned response for stable preference or genuine agreement. Public elicitation may suppress unpopular knowledge, inflate compliance, and expose vulnerable participants. Fully private elicitation may remove commitment, shared reasoning, contestability, and accountability. Anonymous aggregation may protect candor but invite manipulation or make follow-up impossible. Without an explicit comparison and governance loop, designers cannot tell whether observed convergence reflects learning, reputation management, coercion, strategic signaling, or selection into the visible forum.

trigger_conditions: responses change when names, roles, rankings, peers, leaders, clients, or cameras are present

trigger_conditions: public unanimity coexists with private doubt, later reversal, anonymous complaints, or low follow-through

trigger_conditions: participants face retaliation, stigma, status loss, exclusion, or reputational reward for a response

trigger_conditions: a visible contribution or commitment may improve coordination but also distort intrinsic motivation

trigger_conditions: evaluators need candid evidence and a legitimate public decision without treating either stage as ground truth

trigger_conditions: an online system exposes popularity, identity, reaction counts, or durable history before independent judgment

trigger_conditions: sensitive reporting, health, education, employment, or civic participation requires both protection and due process

consequences_of_non_intervention: false consensus and preference falsification

consequences_of_non_intervention: distorted surveys, reviews, incident reports, votes, forecasts, and evaluations

consequences_of_non_intervention: conformity cascades and suppressed minority information

consequences_of_non_intervention: performative compliance followed by weak execution or covert resistance

consequences_of_non_intervention: retaliation, stigma, privacy loss, or chilling effects

consequences_of_non_intervention: unaccountable anonymous influence or unverifiable duplicate participation

consequences_of_non_intervention: governance that confuses visibility with legitimacy

intervention_summary: Specify the consequential decision; map actual and imagined audiences, power, incentives, and disclosure risks; establish comparable protected and visible response conditions; collect independent input before exposure to social signals; estimate divergence and uncertainty; diagnose reputation, conformity, safety, signaling, commitment, or learning mechanisms; select a proportionate visibility architecture; stage private deliberation and public commitment when appropriate; reconcile material divergence; and monitor leakage, retaliation, adaptation, gaming, and implementation.

operating_sequence: define the decision, behavior, intended inference, affected parties, and consequence of context distortion

operating_sequence: inventory direct, indirect, recorded, algorithmic, and imagined audiences

operating_sequence: map identity exposure, status, dependency, retaliation, reward, and legal or ethical constraints

operating_sequence: define comparable response units and visibility conditions before collecting outcome data

operating_sequence: capture an independent private or protected baseline before public cues where feasible

operating_sequence: capture the public, identified, deliberative, or commitment response without changing the substantive question silently

operating_sequence: estimate divergence by direction, magnitude, subgroup, confidence, and plausible alternative explanation

operating_sequence: diagnose whether pressure, learning, signaling, commitment, accountability, confusion, or selection best explains the difference

operating_sequence: choose private, confidential, anonymous, pseudonymous, identified, public, aggregated, delayed, or staged visibility

operating_sequence: disclose the chosen privacy, identity, retention, use, and exception rules in language participants can act on

operating_sequence: reconcile consequential divergence through protected explanation, independent review, or explicit dual reporting

operating_sequence: validate behavioral follow-through and harms rather than optimizing only expressed agreement

operating_sequence: review the design after leaks, retaliation, gaming, norm change, leadership change, or audience expansion

sense: Compare response, participation, quality, follow-through, and harm signals across governed visibility conditions.

interpret: Separate audience pressure from learning, selection, measurement change, incentives, and random variation.

decide: Select or revise visibility, identity, aggregation, sequencing, disclosure, and escalation rules.

act: Run protected elicitation, staged deliberation, public commitment, or accountable confidential review.

verify: Test candor, legitimacy, decision quality, implementation, privacy, retaliation, gaming, and auditability.

decision_rules: if the purpose is diagnosis of independent belief, collect protected input before revealing peer or authority positions

decision_rules: if the purpose is binding collective action, preserve a later identified or institutionally accountable commitment stage

decision_rules: if identity exposure creates material retaliation risk, minimize exposure and use an independently governed confidential channel

decision_rules: if anonymity permits duplicate, abusive, or conflicted participation, separate eligibility verification from identity disclosure

decision_rules: if private and public responses diverge materially, report both with context and investigate mechanism before aggregation

decision_rules: if public deliberation produces evidence-based revision, preserve the revision trace rather than labeling all change as conformity

decision_rules: if a confidentiality promise cannot be technically and institutionally upheld, narrow the promise before collection

decision_rules: if visibility changes intrinsic motivation or contribution quality, tune recognition and publicity rather than maximizing exposure

prose_essence:
Audience-Conditioned Behavior Calibration is a reusable way to diagnose and govern the fact that people often respond differently when they believe others are watching. It treats visibility as a design variable rather than background scenery. The archetype compares meaningfully equivalent private, confidential, anonymous, identified, public, recorded, and staged conditions; estimates how much the response changes; asks why it changes; and selects the least harmful visibility architecture that still supports the actual decision.

The essential move is not “make everything anonymous” or “put everything in public.” It is to separate three purposes that are routinely mixed together: learning what people independently believe or experience, enabling them to learn from one another, and obtaining an accountable commitment that others can rely on. One condition rarely serves all three. A protected first judgment may preserve information; a deliberative middle stage may support learning; and an identified final commitment may support coordination. In other settings, identity must remain confidential throughout, while an authorized institution retains enough evidence to investigate abuse or act on urgent risk.

The archetype rejects the private-truth fallacy. Private and public answers are condition-specific evidence, not automatic truth or legitimacy.

In compact form: establish an independent baseline, create a comparable visible condition, measure divergence with uncertainty, diagnose the audience mechanism, choose a proportionate visibility rule, protect participants and process integrity, reconcile material divergence, and verify real behavior and harms after the designed context is in use.

prose_when_to_use:
Use this archetype when the same substantive question or behavior plausibly changes because peers, authorities, clients, opponents, beneficiaries, strangers, or future readers can observe it. Common signals include striking unanimity in public paired with private doubt, low follow-through after ceremonial agreement, anonymous complaints that never appear in meetings, sharp differences between named and unnamed reviews, reluctance to report errors near powerful actors, or contributions that increase or decrease when rankings and credit are visible.

It is particularly valuable when a system needs two goods at once. Examples include candor and accountability, independent judgment and collective learning, privacy and safety follow-up, minority protection and legitimate commitment, confidential evaluation and public trust, or anonymous participation and eligibility control. These tensions are structural, not evidence that one side should always win.

Use it before designing surveys, votes, reviews, meetings, incident channels, public consultations, peer evaluations, ranking systems, community moderation, sensitive service intake, research protocols, or recognition programs when audience effects could change the result. Use it after deployment when behavior changes unexpectedly after names, cameras, reaction counts, leader attendance, publication, or archival search are introduced.

The archetype is also useful when public and private evidence already conflict. Rather than choosing the channel that favors a preferred conclusion, preserve both distributions, verify comparability, and investigate whether the difference reflects reputation pressure, safety, learning, strategic signaling, selection, misunderstanding, or a change in stakes. Divergence can be the most important result.

Do not use it as the primary frame when the conditions differ in question wording, sample, incentives, timing, or information so substantially that audience presence cannot be isolated. First repair the measurement design. It is not the main tool for cryptographic confidentiality, language adaptation, public-relations messaging, generic psychological safety, or legal privilege, though those may support the intervention.

Do not create an audience experiment merely because it is interesting. Comparison is justified when the inference or decision is consequential and the design can protect participants. In emergencies where immediate identity is necessary to protect life or prevent serious harm, a delayed or anonymous path may be inappropriate; the bounded exception and access rules should be explicit.

prose_structural_problem:
Behavior is observed inside a social field. The participant anticipates how visible action will affect reputation, belonging, status, employment, access, safety, moral identity, credit, reciprocity, or future treatment. That anticipation may change what is said, whether anything is said, how much effort is contributed, how risk is reported, and whether a promise is kept. The observer then mistakes the visible behavior for a stable trait or preference.

Several pathways can produce the same public-private difference. A person may conform because disagreement is costly; learn from credible peers and rationally revise; signal loyalty; avoid humiliating someone; suppress uncertainty; exaggerate virtue; withhold a stigmatized experience; make a public commitment that increases follow-through; or join a visible contribution because reciprocity is now observable. Without a mechanism diagnosis, the same intervention can help one pathway and harm another.

Power makes nominally equal publicness unequal. A junior employee speaking before an executive, a patient speaking before a caregiver, a student speaking before a grader, or a contractor speaking before a buyer faces consequences unlike those of a high-status participant. A small invitation-only forum can create more pressure than a large anonymous one. Aggregate averages can conceal this asymmetry.

The structural remedy is to specify purpose, audience, power, identity exposure, sequence, aggregation, persistence, and consequences as part of the intervention. The design must make room for protected independence, shared learning, and accountable commitment in the proportions the task actually requires.

prose_intervention_logic:
Begin with the consequential decision and intended inference. State whether the system needs an estimate of independent belief, a report of lived experience, a prediction, a preference distribution, deliberative reasons, a binding choice, a contribution, or a behavior change. Record what failure would cost and who bears that cost. This prevents a low-stakes pulse survey from being treated as a mandate or a ceremonial public promise from being treated as a reliable forecast.

Map audiences next. Include people physically present, those with later access, record custodians, managers, peers, clients, family, regulators, platform followers, data brokers, search engines, models trained on the record, and future unknown audiences. For each, record whether they can see content, identity, metadata, timing, revisions, or inferred group membership, and what reward or punishment they control.

Define comparable conditions before collection. Keep the substantive prompt, response unit, time window, incentives, information, and facilitator as stable as practical. If order matters, capture independent input before public cues or counterbalance conditions where ethically defensible. Record selection, nonresponse, attrition, and leakage. A difference between a private survey of all staff and a voluntary public meeting of confident speakers is not a clean audience estimate.

Collect a protected independent baseline when the decision needs unanchored information. Protection can mean sealed forecasts, private polling, confidential interviews, blinded review, privacy-preserving surveys, or independent intake. It should not mean an unverifiable promise. Explain who can access identity, under what exceptions, how long records persist, and whether the participant can withdraw or correct.

Estimate divergence with uncertainty and subgroup protection. Examine direction, magnitude, distribution, missingness, confidence, and practical consequence. Do not publish cells that enable re-identification. Qualitative explanations can help distinguish fear from learning, but asking for an explanation may itself create exposure; use protected channels and avoid demanding identity-revealing detail.

Diagnose mechanisms before changing visibility. If people revised after hearing new evidence, that is not automatically conformity. If public commitment improves execution without suppressing warnings, it may be useful. If identity exposure reduces error reporting among dependent staff, increase protection. If anonymity enables abuse or duplicate participation, separate eligibility verification from audience disclosure rather than abandoning protection altogether.

Close the loop with real outcomes. Track whether the public commitment was implemented, whether protected reports were useful, whether privacy promises held, whether retaliation or chilling occurred, whether response quality changed, and whether participants learned to game the conditions. Review the architecture when leadership, technology, law, audience, or risk changes.

prose_key_components:
### Consequential Decision and Inference (`consequential_decision_and_inference`)

The bounded decision, behavior, inference, affected parties, and consequence that justify changing visibility.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"consequential_decision_and_inference","name":"Consequential Decision and Inference","component_type":"specification","maturity":"reusable","definition":"The bounded decision, behavior, inference, affected parties, and consequence that justify changing visibility.","required_fields":["decision","response_or_behavior","permitted_inference","affected_parties","consequence_of_error","owner"],"invariants":["diagnosis_is_not_silently_recast_as_commitment","purpose_precedes_visibility_choice"],"validation_checks":["decision_trace_check","inference_boundary_review"],"failure_signatures":["purpose_drift","survey_treated_as_mandate","ceremonial_agreement_treated_as_forecast"],"domain_examples":["strategy_forecast","safety_report","civic_consultation"]}

### Audience and Observability Map (`audience_and_observability_map`)

A map of direct, indirect, recorded, algorithmic, future, and imagined audiences and the fields each can observe.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"audience_and_observability_map","name":"Audience and Observability Map","component_type":"context_map","maturity":"reusable","definition":"A map of direct, indirect, recorded, algorithmic, future, and imagined audiences and the fields each can observe.","required_fields":["audiences","content_access","identity_access","metadata_access","timing","persistence","searchability","transfer_paths"],"invariants":["reasonably_expected_audience_is_recorded","future_access_is_not_ignored"],"validation_checks":["access_path_test","participant_expectation_check"],"failure_signatures":["hidden_future_audience","metadata_audience_omitted","policy_reality_gap"],"domain_examples":["employee_survey","platform_profile","research_archive"]}

### Power, Reputation, and Dependency Map (`power_reputation_and_dependency_map`)

A record of status, reward, retaliation, gatekeeping, stigma, credit, belonging, and dependency pressures associated with each audience.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"power_reputation_and_dependency_map","name":"Power, Reputation, and Dependency Map","component_type":"risk_map","maturity":"reusable","definition":"A record of status, reward, retaliation, gatekeeping, stigma, credit, belonging, and dependency pressures associated with each audience.","required_fields":["actor_or_group","power_source","reward","adverse_consequence","dependency","vulnerability","mitigation_owner"],"invariants":["one_powerful_observer_is_not_hidden_by_audience_size","positive_and_negative_incentives_are_both_considered"],"validation_checks":["lower_power_participant_review","consequence_path_check"],"failure_signatures":["status_pressure_omitted","aggregate_safety_assumption","indirect_retaliation_unmapped"],"domain_examples":["supervisor_team","grader_student","buyer_supplier"]}

### Response Unit and Condition Specification (`response_unit_and_condition_specification`)

The comparable question, action, sample, timing, information, incentive, order, facilitator, and visibility settings for each condition.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"response_unit_and_condition_specification","name":"Response Unit and Condition Specification","component_type":"experimental_specification","maturity":"reusable","definition":"The comparable question, action, sample, timing, information, incentive, order, facilitator, and visibility settings for each condition.","required_fields":["response_unit","prompt_or_task","sample","timing","information","incentive","order","facilitator","visibility_condition"],"invariants":["material_differences_are_controlled_or_disclosed","outcome_definition_is_stable"],"validation_checks":["condition_comparability_audit","order_effect_review","sample_balance_check"],"failure_signatures":["wording_confound","sample_selection_confound","public_condition_has_extra_information"],"domain_examples":["paired_poll","blind_review","sensitive_survey"]}

### Protected Independent Baseline (`protected_independent_baseline`)

A time-bounded response captured before relevant public cues or reputation commitment under an enforceable protection rule.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"protected_independent_baseline","name":"Protected Independent Baseline","component_type":"evidence_record","maturity":"reusable","definition":"A time-bounded response captured before relevant public cues or reputation commitment under an enforceable protection rule.","required_fields":["response","timestamp","condition","identity_linkage","access_rule","disclosure_exceptions","retention"],"invariants":["baseline_precedes_declared_social_cues","protection_is_operational_not_rhetorical"],"validation_checks":["cue_exposure_check","access_control_test","completeness_check"],"failure_signatures":["anchored_baseline","unverifiable_confidentiality","selective_missingness"],"domain_examples":["sealed_forecast","private_comprehension_check","confidential_risk_input"]}

### Visible or Commitment Condition (`visible_or_commitment_condition`)

The identified, public, deliberative, witnessed, or durable condition used for learning, coordination, credit, or accountability.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"visible_or_commitment_condition","name":"Visible or Commitment Condition","component_type":"condition_record","maturity":"reusable","definition":"The identified, public, deliberative, witnessed, or durable condition used for learning, coordination, credit, or accountability.","required_fields":["audience","identity_mode","content","timing","persistence","commitment_meaning","revision_rule"],"invariants":["exposure_has_a_declared_function","exploratory_expression_is_not_recast_as_obligation"],"validation_checks":["audience_access_check","commitment_semantics_review"],"failure_signatures":["broadcast_without_need","false_binding_claim","revision_impossible"],"domain_examples":["final_vote","named_decision","public_pledge"]}

### Divergence and Uncertainty Record (`divergence_and_uncertainty_record`)

A comparison of response distributions across conditions with missingness, subgroup protection, confidence, and practical consequence.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"divergence_and_uncertainty_record","name":"Divergence and Uncertainty Record","component_type":"analysis_record","maturity":"reusable","definition":"A comparison of response distributions across conditions with missingness, subgroup protection, confidence, and practical consequence.","required_fields":["conditions","estimand","direction","magnitude","uncertainty","missingness","subgroup_rule","practical_significance"],"invariants":["dual_distributions_are_preserved","insufficient_evidence_is_not_reported_as_no_effect"],"validation_checks":["calculation_review","missing_data_analysis","privacy_threshold_check"],"failure_signatures":["average_erases_minority","confidence_omitted","small_cell_disclosure"],"domain_examples":["named_anonymous_review_gap","meeting_prepoll_gap","public_private_reporting_gap"]}

### Audience-Effect Mechanism Hypothesis (`audience_effect_mechanism_hypothesis`)

A revisable explanation distinguishing reputation pressure, conformity, safety, learning, signaling, commitment, selection, confusion, and measurement reactivity.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"audience_effect_mechanism_hypothesis","name":"Audience-Effect Mechanism Hypothesis","component_type":"diagnostic_model","maturity":"reusable","definition":"A revisable explanation distinguishing reputation pressure, conformity, safety, learning, signaling, commitment, selection, confusion, and measurement reactivity.","required_fields":["observed_pattern","candidate_mechanisms","supporting_evidence","competing_explanations","confidence","discriminating_test"],"invariants":["revision_after_evidence_is_not_automatically_conformity","multiple_mechanisms_may_coexist"],"validation_checks":["alternative_explanation_review","outcome_follow_through_check"],"failure_signatures":["single_cause_story","moralized_interpretation","learning_mislabeled_as_pressure"],"domain_examples":["group_vote","donation_visibility","error_reporting"]}

### Visibility Architecture (`visibility_architecture`)

The governed combination of audience, identity, timing, aggregation, persistence, searchability, and disclosure.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"visibility_architecture","name":"Visibility Architecture","component_type":"policy_and_access_design","maturity":"reusable","definition":"The governed combination of audience, identity, timing, aggregation, persistence, searchability, and disclosure.","required_fields":["audience_scope","identity_mode","timing","aggregation","persistence","searchability","access_roles","disclosure_triggers"],"invariants":["publicness_is_not_treated_as_binary","least_exposure_supports_the_purpose"],"validation_checks":["role_access_matrix_test","audience_expansion_scenario","proportionality_review"],"failure_signatures":["audience_creep","unnecessary_naming","anonymous_label_on_linkable_records"],"domain_examples":["staged_peer_review","confidential_hotline","aggregate_public_dashboard"]}

### Privacy, Confidentiality, and Retention Boundary (`privacy_confidentiality_and_retention_boundary`)

Enforceable rules for collection, linkage, access, use, redaction, correction, retention, deletion, and exceptional disclosure.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"privacy_confidentiality_and_retention_boundary","name":"Privacy, Confidentiality, and Retention Boundary","component_type":"governance_boundary","maturity":"reusable","definition":"Enforceable rules for collection, linkage, access, use, redaction, correction, retention, deletion, and exceptional disclosure.","required_fields":["collected_fields","linkage","access","purposes","exceptions","retention","deletion","correction","custodian"],"invariants":["promise_matches_control","purpose_expansion_requires_review"],"validation_checks":["technical_access_test","retention_job_test","exception_authority_check"],"failure_signatures":["confidentiality_theater","indefinite_retention","hidden_secondary_use"],"domain_examples":["research_data","employee_reporting","patient_intake"]}

### Participation and Consent Notice (`participation_and_consent_notice`)

A usable explanation of audience, identity, purpose, persistence, consequences, limits, choices, and remedies.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"participation_and_consent_notice","name":"Participation and Consent Notice","component_type":"disclosure","maturity":"reusable","definition":"A usable explanation of audience, identity, purpose, persistence, consequences, limits, choices, and remedies.","required_fields":["audience","identity_access","purpose","retention","exceptions","voluntariness","correction","appeal","contact"],"invariants":["notice_precedes_material_exposure","comprehension_matters_more_than_legal_density"],"validation_checks":["teach_back_check","accessibility_review","practice_alignment_check"],"failure_signatures":["retroactive_publicity","coerced_default","unreadable_notice"],"domain_examples":["survey_notice","recording_notice","consultation_terms"]}

### Staged Elicitation and Commitment Path (`staged_elicitation_and_commitment_path`)

The ordered path from independent judgment through explanation, deliberation, revision, and accountable action.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"staged_elicitation_and_commitment_path","name":"Staged Elicitation and Commitment Path","component_type":"workflow","maturity":"reusable","definition":"The ordered path from independent judgment through explanation, deliberation, revision, and accountable action.","required_fields":["stages","entry_conditions","information_release","identity_release","revision_points","commitment_stage","owners"],"invariants":["independence_stage_is_not_contaminated_silently","final_commitment_is_unambiguous"],"validation_checks":["stage_order_test","cue_release_review","handoff_check"],"failure_signatures":["premature_public_anchor","hidden_stage_change","diagnosis_commitment_collapse"],"domain_examples":["forecast_deliberation_decision","blind_review_attribution","private_vote_public_resolution"]}

### Divergence Reconciliation Protocol (`divergence_reconciliation_protocol`)

A governed response to material public-private difference through explanation, dual reporting, independent review, revision, or preserved disagreement.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"divergence_reconciliation_protocol","name":"Divergence Reconciliation Protocol","component_type":"decision_protocol","maturity":"reusable","definition":"A governed response to material public-private difference through explanation, dual reporting, independent review, revision, or preserved disagreement.","required_fields":["materiality_threshold","protected_explanation_path","decision_owner","review_route","outputs","escalation","closure"],"invariants":["divergence_is_not_forced_to_zero","individuals_need_not_be_exposed_to_prove_the_pattern"],"validation_checks":["threshold_application","minority_evidence_review","closure_trace"],"failure_signatures":["averaged_away_warning","coerced_alignment","unresolved_owner"],"domain_examples":["risk_appendix","minority_report","discrepant_survey_hearing_result"]}

### Retaliation and Leakage Safeguard (`retaliation_and_leakage_safeguard`)

Prevention, detection, response, and repair for unauthorized identity inference, disclosure, punishment, or chilling.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"retaliation_and_leakage_safeguard","name":"Retaliation and Leakage Safeguard","component_type":"safety_control","maturity":"reusable","definition":"Prevention, detection, response, and repair for unauthorized identity inference, disclosure, punishment, or chilling.","required_fields":["threats","inference_channels","prevention","monitoring","reporting","investigation","remedy","sanctions"],"invariants":["powerful_audiences_are_in_scope","indirect_reidentification_is_tested"],"validation_checks":["metadata_attack_review","small_cell_test","adverse_action_monitor"],"failure_signatures":["quote_reidentification","schedule_retaliation","access_log_ignored"],"domain_examples":["whistleblowing","classroom_feedback","community_moderation"]}

### Accountability and Audit Boundary (`accountability_and_audit_boundary`)

The least-exposure evidence, ownership, appeal, and audit design needed to make protected processes answerable.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"accountability_and_audit_boundary","name":"Accountability and Audit Boundary","component_type":"governance_record","maturity":"reusable","definition":"The least-exposure evidence, ownership, appeal, and audit design needed to make protected processes answerable.","required_fields":["decision_owner","evidence_custodian","audit_role","access_threshold","appeal","misuse_review","public_summary"],"invariants":["confidentiality_does_not_hide_decision_power","audit_does_not_default_to_public_exposure"],"validation_checks":["owner_trace","auditor_independence_check","appeal_test"],"failure_signatures":["secret_unowned_decision","auditor_can_expose_everything","no_appeal"],"domain_examples":["confidential_investigation","blind_selection","protected_consultation"]}

### Adaptation and Behavioral Follow-Through Monitor (`adaptation_and_behavioral_follow_through_monitor`)

A record of gaming, rehearsed response, participation change, actual implementation, and harm after context design.

Semantic canonical mapping retained the complete legacy component record: {"slug":"adaptation_and_behavioral_follow_through_monitor","name":"Adaptation and Behavioral Follow-Through Monitor","component_type":"monitoring_system","maturity":"reusable","definition":"A record of gaming, rehearsed response, participation change, actual implementation, and harm after context design.","required_fields":["expected_behavior","outcome_measures","adaptation_signals","participation","harm_signals","cadence","owner","action_rule"],"invariants":["expression_is_not_the_only_outcome","calibration_is_retested_after_context_change"],"validation_checks":["commitment_action_crosswalk","panel_conditioning_review","drift_check"],"failure_signatures":["performative_compliance","survey_gaming","stale_calibration"],"domain_examples":["policy_implementation","safety_reporting","education_response"]} Consolidated omitted legacy component records: [{"slug":"eligibility_without_identity_disclosure","name":"Eligibility Without Identity Disclosure","component_type":"optional_access_design","maturity":"reusable","definition":"Separation of uniqueness or participation-right verification from identity disclosure to the decision audience.","required_fields":["eligibility_rule","verifier","token_or_proof","audience_disclosure","duplicate_control","appeal"],"invariants":["verifier_cannot_expand_use_unilaterally","audience_receives_no_unneeded_identity"],"validation_checks":["duplicate_test","linkage_attack_review"],"failure_signatures":["anonymous_stuffing","verifier_collusion","hidden_identity_join"],"domain_examples":["sensitive_vote","peer_review","resident_consultation"]},{"slug":"audience_expansion_trigger","name":"Audience Expansion Trigger","component_type":"optional_escalation_rule","maturity":"reusable","definition":"A bounded rule for widening access because of imminent harm, legal duty, consent, conflict, credit, or due process.","required_fields":["trigger","authority","necessity","proportionality","notice","scope","duration","review"],"invariants":["expansion_is_exception_not_default","disclosure_is_minimized"],"validation_checks":["scenario_review","authority_test","post_expansion_audit"],"failure_signatures":["vague_safety_exception","permanent_expansion","no_notice_or_review"],"domain_examples":["safeguarding","fraud_review","authorship_credit"]},{"slug":"recognition_and_credit_policy","name":"Recognition and Credit Policy","component_type":"optional_incentive_policy","maturity":"reusable","definition":"Rules for acknowledging contribution without creating avoidable popularity competition or exposing sensitive work.","required_fields":["credit_unit","audience","timing","evidence","opt_out","collective_credit","dispute_route"],"invariants":["visible_activity_is_not_equated_with_value","protected_contribution_can_receive_safe_credit"],"validation_checks":["motivation_shift_review","invisible_work_audit","credit_dispute_test"],"failure_signatures":["performative_activity","popularity_capture","maintenance_work_erased"],"domain_examples":["team_credit","research_authorship","volunteer_recognition"]},{"slug":"subgroup_equity_review","name":"Subgroup Equity Review","component_type":"optional_equity_assessment","maturity":"reusable","definition":"A privacy-preserving review of differential candor, burden, exposure, participation, and retaliation across power and identity positions.","required_fields":["groups_or_power_positions","metrics","privacy_rule","qualitative_evidence","disparities","action","owner"],"invariants":["analysis_does_not_reidentify_small_groups","aggregate_safety_does_not_erase_disparity"],"validation_checks":["minimum_cell_review","burden_comparison","remedy_follow_up"],"failure_signatures":["small_cell_exposure","average_hides_harm","review_without_remedy"],"domain_examples":["workplace_survey","civic_hearing","classroom_participation"]}]

prose_common_mechanisms:
### Simultaneous Private Poll Then Public Deliberation (`simultaneous_private_poll_then_public_deliberation`)

**Type:** `elicitation_sequence`

Preserve independent judgments before exposing the group distribution and opening shared reasoning.

Selection constraints and retained implementation evidence: decision_prompt; participant_set; private_channel; release_rule; deliberation_protocol; Complete legacy mechanism record retained: {"slug":"simultaneous_private_poll_then_public_deliberation","name":"Simultaneous Private Poll Then Public Deliberation","mechanism_type":"elicitation_sequence","maturity":"reusable","purpose":"Preserve independent judgments before exposing the group distribution and opening shared reasoning.","inputs":["decision_prompt","participant_set","private_channel","release_rule","deliberation_protocol"],"procedure":["collect_simultaneously","lock_or_timestamp_responses","publish_safe_aggregate","deliberate_evidence","capture_revision","record_final_commitment"],"outputs":["baseline_distribution","deliberation_record","revision_distribution","decision"],"safeguards":["do_not_publish_small_cells","separate_initial_response_from_binding_vote","protect_nonresponse"],"verification":["timing_audit","aggregate_accuracy","revision_reason_sample","follow_through_check"],"failure_signatures":["leader_position_leaks_early","baseline_not_private","aggregate_becomes_popularity_pressure"]}

### Confidential Interview with Bounded Reporting (`confidential_interview_with_bounded_reporting`)

**Type:** `protected_channel`

Gather sensitive context under a declared access, quotation, escalation, and retention boundary.

Selection constraints and retained implementation evidence: interview_scope; trained_interviewer; notice; access_policy; escalation_threshold; Complete legacy mechanism record retained: {"slug":"confidential_interview_with_bounded_reporting","name":"Confidential Interview with Bounded Reporting","mechanism_type":"protected_channel","maturity":"reusable","purpose":"Gather sensitive context under a declared access, quotation, escalation, and retention boundary.","inputs":["interview_scope","trained_interviewer","notice","access_policy","escalation_threshold"],"procedure":["explain_boundary","confirm_understanding","collect_minimum_detail","classify_access","synthesize_safely","route_required_action","delete_or_archive"],"outputs":["protected_record","bounded_synthesis","action_referral","retention_record"],"safeguards":["no_false_off_record_promise","minimize_identity_detail","independent_custody_when_power_risk_exists"],"verification":["access_log_review","quotation_reidentification_test","participant_feedback","action_trace"],"failure_signatures":["informal_notes_leak","interviewer_conflict","hidden_mandatory_disclosure"]}

### Anonymous Aggregate Response (`anonymous_aggregate_response`)

**Type:** `aggregation`

Surface a distribution while preventing ordinary linkage from response to person.

Selection constraints and retained implementation evidence: response_prompt; collection_channel; eligibility_rule; privacy_threshold; aggregation_plan; Complete legacy mechanism record retained: {"slug":"anonymous_aggregate_response","name":"Anonymous Aggregate Response","mechanism_type":"aggregation","maturity":"reusable","purpose":"Surface a distribution while preventing ordinary linkage from response to person.","inputs":["response_prompt","collection_channel","eligibility_rule","privacy_threshold","aggregation_plan"],"procedure":["separate_eligibility_if_needed","minimize_metadata","collect","suppress_small_cells","aggregate","publish_limits"],"outputs":["aggregate_distribution","missingness_report","privacy_report"],"safeguards":["do_not_claim_anonymity_if_linkable","prevent_duplicate_abuse","avoid_identifying_free_text"],"verification":["linkage_attack_test","duplicate_test","cell_size_check","participant_expectation_check"],"failure_signatures":["small_cell_inference","device_identifier_retained","anonymous_counts_treated_as_votes"]}

### Sealed Precommitment (`sealed_precommitment`)

**Type:** `commitment_device`

Preserve a judgment, forecast, or criterion before discussion or outcome knowledge.

Selection constraints and retained implementation evidence: prompt; timestamp_rule; seal_or_hash_method; reveal_condition; correction_policy; Complete legacy mechanism record retained: {"slug":"sealed_precommitment","name":"Sealed Precommitment","mechanism_type":"commitment_device","maturity":"reusable","purpose":"Preserve a judgment, forecast, or criterion before discussion or outcome knowledge.","inputs":["prompt","timestamp_rule","seal_or_hash_method","reveal_condition","correction_policy"],"procedure":["record_independently","seal_and_timestamp","store_under_access_rule","reveal_on_trigger","compare_with_later_response"],"outputs":["sealed_record","reveal_evidence","revision_trace"],"safeguards":["distinguish_forecast_from_obligation","allow_declared_correction","avoid_identity_broadcast_without_need"],"verification":["integrity_check","timestamp_check","reveal_rule_audit"],"failure_signatures":["post_hoc_record","selective_reveal","immutable_error"]}

### Randomized Response or Privacy-Preserving Survey (`randomized_response_or_privacy_preserving_survey`)

**Type:** `measurement_method`

Estimate sensitive prevalence while reducing the link between individual and answer.

Selection constraints and retained implementation evidence: estimand; privacy_method; sampling_frame; participant_instruction; analysis_model; Complete legacy mechanism record retained: {"slug":"randomized_response_or_privacy_preserving_survey","name":"Randomized Response or Privacy-Preserving Survey","mechanism_type":"measurement_method","maturity":"reusable","purpose":"Estimate sensitive prevalence while reducing the link between individual and answer.","inputs":["estimand","privacy_method","sampling_frame","participant_instruction","analysis_model"],"procedure":["validate_method","explain_simply","collect_under_minimization","estimate_distribution","quantify_uncertainty","publish_limits"],"outputs":["population_estimate","uncertainty","protocol_report","privacy_assessment"],"safeguards":["do_not_infer_individual_status","test_comprehension","secure_raw_events"],"verification":["simulation_calibration","comprehension_pilot","nonresponse_analysis"],"failure_signatures":["method_confusion","biased_nonresponse","individual_inference_overclaim"]}

### Double-Blind or Identity-Masked Review (`double_blind_or_identity_masked_review`)

**Type:** `evaluation_design`

Reduce reputation and status cues during evaluation while preserving later conflict, credit, appeal, and accountability stages.

Selection constraints and retained implementation evidence: submission; masking_rule; conflict_verifier; evaluation_criteria; unmasking_trigger; Complete legacy mechanism record retained: {"slug":"double_blind_or_identity_masked_review","name":"Double-Blind or Identity-Masked Review","mechanism_type":"evaluation_design","maturity":"reusable","purpose":"Reduce reputation and status cues during evaluation while preserving later conflict, credit, appeal, and accountability stages.","inputs":["submission","masking_rule","conflict_verifier","evaluation_criteria","unmasking_trigger"],"procedure":["separate_identity","redact_cues","verify_conflicts","review_evidence","record_score_and_reason","unmask_under_rule","handle_appeal"],"outputs":["masked_review","residual_inference_assessment","attribution_record","appeal_trace"],"safeguards":["audit_unequal_maskability","do_not_hide_relevant_context_permanently","protect_reviewer_and_subject_due_process"],"verification":["reidentification_sample","interrater_review","post_unmasking_shift_check"],"failure_signatures":["topic_reveals_identity","prestige_reintroduced_early","conflicts_unchecked"]}

### Staged Identity Disclosure (`staged_identity_disclosure`)

**Type:** `disclosure_protocol`

Delay or limit identity exposure until necessary for commitment, credit, conflict, safeguarding, or due process.

Selection constraints and retained implementation evidence: stage_map; identity_custodian; disclosure_triggers; audience_roles; notice; Complete legacy mechanism record retained: {"slug":"staged_identity_disclosure","name":"Staged Identity Disclosure","mechanism_type":"disclosure_protocol","maturity":"reusable","purpose":"Delay or limit identity exposure until necessary for commitment, credit, conflict, safeguarding, or due process.","inputs":["stage_map","identity_custodian","disclosure_triggers","audience_roles","notice"],"procedure":["collect_identity_separately","issue_stage_token","release_minimum_fields_on_trigger","log_access","revoke_or_expire"],"outputs":["stage_specific_identity_view","disclosure_log","expiry_record"],"safeguards":["no_unilateral_audience_expansion","minimum_field_release","participant_notice_where_safe"],"verification":["role_access_test","trigger_replay","access_log_audit"],"failure_signatures":["premature_unmasking","permanent_linkage","custodian_conflict"]}

### Public-Private Divergence Dashboard (`public_private_divergence_dashboard`)

**Type:** `monitoring_representation`

Show protected aggregate divergence, uncertainty, participation, follow-through, and harm signals.

Selection constraints and retained implementation evidence: condition_data; privacy_rules; estimands; implementation_data; harm_signals; Complete legacy mechanism record retained: {"slug":"public_private_divergence_dashboard","name":"Public-Private Divergence Dashboard","mechanism_type":"monitoring_representation","maturity":"reusable","purpose":"Show protected aggregate divergence, uncertainty, participation, follow-through, and harm signals.","inputs":["condition_data","privacy_rules","estimands","implementation_data","harm_signals"],"procedure":["validate_comparability","aggregate_safely","calculate_uncertainty","flag_material_gaps","link_action_owner","refresh_on_cadence"],"outputs":["dashboard","exception_register","action_queue","methods_note"],"safeguards":["no_individual_conformity_ranking","minimum_cells","authorized_drilldown_only"],"verification":["number_reconciliation","privacy_attack_review","action_closure_check"],"failure_signatures":["false_precision","minority_erasure","dashboard_as_surveillance"]}

### Protected Minority or Uncertainty Report (`protected_minority_or_uncertainty_report`)

**Type:** `decision_record`

Preserve material dissent, risk, or uncertainty after a public decision without unnecessary identity exposure.

Selection constraints and retained implementation evidence: decision; dissent_or_uncertainty; evidence; materiality_rule; protection_rule; Complete legacy mechanism record retained: {"slug":"protected_minority_or_uncertainty_report","name":"Protected Minority or Uncertainty Report","mechanism_type":"decision_record","maturity":"reusable","purpose":"Preserve material dissent, risk, or uncertainty after a public decision without unnecessary identity exposure.","inputs":["decision","dissent_or_uncertainty","evidence","materiality_rule","protection_rule"],"procedure":["verify_scope","summarize_without_laundering","attach_evidence","assign_review_trigger","preserve_with_decision","revisit"],"outputs":["minority_report","uncertainty_boundary","reconsideration_trigger"],"safeguards":["not_automatic_veto","no_forced_naming","no_false_consensus_language"],"verification":["decision_attachment_check","trigger_monitoring","author_protection_review"],"failure_signatures":["appendix_ignored","identifying_detail_leaks","dissent_misrepresented"]}

### Retaliation and Re-identification Audit (`retaliation_and_reidentification_audit`)

**Type:** `assessment`

Test whether protected participation can be inferred, disclosed, or punished.

Selection constraints and retained implementation evidence: data_release; access_logs; metadata; group_sizes; adverse_action_data; complaints; Complete legacy mechanism record retained: {"slug":"retaliation_and_reidentification_audit","name":"Retaliation and Re-identification Audit","mechanism_type":"assessment","maturity":"reusable","purpose":"Test whether protected participation can be inferred, disclosed, or punished.","inputs":["data_release","access_logs","metadata","group_sizes","adverse_action_data","complaints"],"procedure":["model_attack_paths","test_small_cells_and_quotes","review_access","compare_adverse_actions","investigate_complaints","order_repair"],"outputs":["risk_findings","incidents","mitigation_plan","enforcement_actions"],"safeguards":["independent_authority","protect_complainants","avoid_recreating_sensitive_dataset"],"verification":["mitigation_retest","remedy_follow_up","governance_review"],"failure_signatures":["audit_excludes_leaders","retaliation_only_defined_formally","privacy_test_stops_at_direct_identifiers"]}

prose_failure_modes:
**Private truth fallacy.** Designers declare protected responses authentic and public ones contaminated. This ignores learning, commitment, strategic private answers, low salience, and unstable preference. Mitigate by treating each as condition-specific evidence and checking reasons and behavior.

**Public legitimacy fallacy.** Visible agreement is treated as consent despite power, retaliation, status, or selection. Mitigate with a protected baseline, power map, participation analysis, dissent record, and appeal.

**Confidentiality theater.** A form promises confidentiality while managers can access raw data, quotes identify speakers, legal or operational exceptions are hidden, or small cells reveal identity. Mitigate with enforceable access separation, tested reporting, accurate notice, and re-identification audit.

**Noncomparable conditions.** Public and private channels use different wording, information, samples, facilitators, incentives, or timing. The difference is mislabeled an audience effect. Mitigate through pre-specified condition records, matching, randomization where ethical, and uncertainty disclosure.

**Anonymity capture.** Duplicate, fabricated, abusive, coordinated, or conflicted participation overwhelms protected channels. Mitigate through separate eligibility verification, rate limits, anomaly review, evidence standards, and due process rather than general identity exposure.

**Re-identification and retaliation.** Writing style, timing, demographic combination, metadata, or informal access exposes the participant. Harm may occur outside formal employment or moderation records. Mitigate through minimization, delayed release, safe aggregation, independent monitoring, and enforceable response.

**Reputation lock-in.** Participants defend an early visible statement after evidence changes. Mitigate by eliciting forecasts before identities, normalizing revision, publishing update rationales, and separating error correction from moral judgment.

**Measurement reactivity.** Participants learn what the system rewards and rehearse responses. The apparent calibration improves while behavior decouples. Mitigate by limiting repeated tests, using outcome evidence, rotating unobtrusive measures, and reviewing incentive effects.

**Forced exposure.** A private record becomes public retroactively, or access to service, work, credit, or participation is conditioned on unnecessary visibility. Mitigate through prospective notice, least exposure, meaningful choice where feasible, and narrow documented exceptions.

**Hidden unaccountable decision.** Confidentiality protects leaders or opaque process rather than respondents. Mitigate through named decision ownership, independent audit, reason publication, appeal, and controlled evidence access.

**False convergence.** Averages or consensus statements erase a small high-consequence warning. Mitigate with distributions, confidence, minority reports, severity weighting, and escalation rules.

**Publicity-induced substitution.** People optimize visible symbols of contribution, virtue, compliance, or safety while underlying outcomes worsen. Mitigate by connecting recognition to verified downstream value and retaining private learning measures.

**Audience creep.** Data collected for a bounded group becomes searchable, reused, sold, trained upon, or shared with a future audience. Mitigate with purpose limitation, technical access, retention, deletion, and new-consent or authority review.

**Burden asymmetry.** Lower-power groups bear more exposure, emotional labor, or proof burden. Mitigate with subgroup equity review, alternative channels, compensation where appropriate, and audience-specific safeguards.

prose_neighbor_distinctions:
**Contextual Selective Propagation** governs where a changed meaning should travel, be translated, or remain bounded. Audience-Conditioned Behavior Calibration governs how being observed changes expression or action and how visibility should be configured. A scope note can support either, but the intervention lifecycles differ.

**Psychological Safety Enablement** creates conditions for surfacing errors, dissent, uncertainty, and risk without fear. It is a strong neighbor and may provide channels or retaliation protections. The present archetype is broader in mechanism and narrower in object: it compares behavior across visibility conditions, including cases where visibility improves commitment or contribution rather than only suppressing speech.

**Dissent Protection Protocol** protects disagreement before consensus and preserves minority concerns. It does not generally estimate audience effects, govern private-public identity architecture, or cover reputation-conditioned generosity, reporting, evaluation, review, and commitment.

**Anti-Herding Signal Design** reduces imitation cues and preserves independent information. It addresses one mechanism—social proof and cascade—without owning confidentiality, public commitment, identity exposure, retaliation, or paired-condition interpretation.

**Credible Signaling** designs hard-to-fake signals of hidden quality or intent. Public behavior may be a signal, but the present archetype asks whether signal incentives distort the response and whether publicity is appropriate. It need not make the signal costlier.

**Contextual Mode-Switching Protocol** changes communication or operating mode when context no longer fits. It can implement a transition from private brainstorming to public decision, but it does not diagnose or quantify audience-conditioned behavior.

**Code / Register Adaptation** changes language and formality for an audience without losing meaning. Audience-conditioned behavior may occur even when language is identical, and the intervention changes visibility rather than register.

**Contribution Visibility Design** makes effort visible to address free-riding and overload. It is a specific visibility application. The present archetype supplies the diagnostic and boundary logic for deciding whether contribution visibility helps, distorts motivation, or exposes people unfairly.

**Private-Public Preference Divergence** is a related prime describing a particular difference between held and expressed preference. The archetype covers that case but also public commitment, learning, signaling, evaluation bias, reporting inhibition, recognition, and behavior under observation.

**Observability** concerns inference of hidden state from visible signals. Audience-conditioned calibration recognizes that observation changes the state or behavior being inferred and therefore governs the measurement context itself.

**Privacy engineering** enforces collection and access properties. It is necessary for many variants but does not decide which visibility condition supports independent information, shared learning, and accountable action.

prose_cross_domain_examples:
### Organizational strategy and forecasting

A leadership team appears unanimous about an aggressive launch. Before the meeting, each member submits a sealed probability estimate, key assumptions, and stop conditions. The aggregate distribution is shown without names. The team deliberates evidence, revises forecasts, and the accountable executive records the decision. A protected risk appendix remains reviewable at milestones. The design preserves independent information and still produces one owned action.

### Safety and incident reporting

Frontline workers rarely report near misses through a tool visible to supervisors. The organization maps metadata and scheduling paths that reveal reporters, moves intake to an independent confidential unit, defines urgent-harm exceptions, publishes aggregate learning, and audits subsequent assignments and evaluations for retaliation. Authorized investigators can request contact through the custodian without exposing identity broadly.

### Public consultation

A public hearing is dominated by organized speakers and people comfortable with formal debate. The agency pairs it with accessible protected surveys and interviews, verifies residency separately where needed, reports participation and nonresponse, publishes both aggregate concerns and public reasons, and traces how evidence affects the decision. Anonymous comment counts are not mislabeled votes.

### Education

Students give confident nods in class but private comprehension checks reveal widespread confusion. The instructor gathers simultaneous low-friction private responses, shares the class-level distribution, reteaches the concept, then invites voluntary public questions. Individual records are not used as participation grades. Learning outcomes verify whether candor produced better instruction.

### Research on stigmatized behavior

A study uses a privacy-preserving survey method, clear limits, condition order controls, nonresponse analysis, and aggregate publication. It does not demand identifying narratives merely to validate the estimate. The report distinguishes population inference from any claim about named individuals.

### Peer review and selection

An evaluation process masks candidate identity and institutional status during an initial evidence review. Conflict and eligibility checks occur through a separate role. Identity is restored for credit, context that is legitimately relevant, appeal, and final accountability. The process audits whether topic and writing style undermine masking and whether anonymity differs across groups.

### Digital communities

A platform finds that visible reaction counts cause early comments to dominate and unpopular but accurate corrections to disappear. It delays counts, collects independent quality signals, permits pseudonymous participation with abuse controls, and reveals aggregate assessment after a threshold. Durable identity histories are limited to purposes users understand. Outcome measures examine correction quality and harassment, not only engagement.

### Healthcare and sensitive services

Patients avoid disclosing stigmatized needs when family or staff can see intake screens. The service offers a private channel, explains mandatory safety exceptions, separates care-relevant information from administrative visibility, and lets patients review disclosure. Follow-up tests whether protected intake improves care without increasing undisclosed access.

prose_non_examples:
A marketing team tailors vocabulary for expert and public audiences. That is register adaptation unless the design is specifically diagnosing how audience visibility changes behavior.

A platform encrypts private messages end to end. That is privacy and security engineering; it becomes this archetype only when message visibility conditions are calibrated against behavioral and decision outcomes.

A manager makes a task board visible so ownership and overload can be managed. That is contribution or backlog visibility design unless private-public comparison and reputation effects are the central intervention.

A facilitator invites a devil’s advocate during a meeting. That is a dissent-protection mechanism. It does not create a full audience-condition architecture by itself.

A regulator publishes final decisions and reasons. That is transparency or accountability unless paired with deliberate protection and analysis of how publicity affects evidence, participation, or commitment.

A researcher compares two different populations, questions, or time periods and attributes the difference to publicness. This is not a valid application because the conditions are not comparable and alternative explanations are uncontrolled.

An employer secretly monitors private conversations to discover “true beliefs.” That is surveillance and coercion, directly outside the archetype’s boundary.

An anonymous rumor board with no eligibility, evidence, abuse, response, or appeal controls is not calibrated candor. It is an ungoverned channel.

A leader asks for a show of hands after announcing their own preference and calls the result consensus. This is precisely the failure the archetype is designed to prevent.

prose_tradeoffs:
Candor and accountability can conflict. Broad anonymity may increase disclosure while making clarification, conflict review, duplicate prevention, or remedy harder. The preferred response is often separation of functions: one role verifies eligibility, another protects identity, an authorized investigator can act under threshold, and the decision audience sees only necessary aggregates.

Independent judgment and deliberative learning can conflict. Hiding peers forever preserves independence but blocks evidence exchange; revealing positions immediately can anchor or conform. Staging provides a principled compromise: independent first response, evidence-focused deliberation, recorded revision, and final decision.

Privacy and equity analysis can conflict. Small-group analysis may reveal unequal chilling or harm, but publication may reveal who responded. Use controlled analysis, minimum cells, privacy-preserving statistics, qualitative review, and public summaries that state limits.

Visible commitment and revisability can conflict. Public promises improve coordination but make correction reputationally costly. Normalize updates, distinguish forecast from identity, permit protected correction, and record why a decision changed.

Recognition and intrinsic motivation can conflict. Public credit may encourage contribution, reciprocity, and fairness; rankings can redirect effort toward visible, popular, or easily counted acts. Tune the recognition layer, diversify credit, and monitor downstream value rather than activity volume.

Transparency and safety can conflict. Public reasoning supports trust and contestability, but raw testimony can expose victims, whistleblowers, patients, students, or vulnerable communities. Publish method, aggregate evidence, decision reasons, ownership, and appeal while restricting identities and details whose exposure is unnecessary.

prose_invariants_to_preserve:
The decision purpose and permitted inference remain explicit. A diagnostic response is not silently converted into consent, obligation, performance evidence, or public endorsement.

Conditions claimed to measure an audience effect remain substantively comparable, or differences are modeled and disclosed. Sample selection, wording, order, incentive, facilitator, timing, and information cannot be hidden inside the visibility label.

Participants receive an accurate account of actual and reasonably foreseeable audiences, identity access, use, retention, and disclosure exceptions. A label such as “anonymous” is not used when metadata or small groups allow routine identification.

Visibility is proportionate. The design exposes no more identity, content, persistence, or searchability than required for candor, coordination, legitimacy, safety, credit, due process, or accountability.

Private input is not presumed truer, and public input is not presumed freer or more legitimate. Both are interpreted in context and tested against reasoning, selection, uncertainty, and follow-through.

Material divergence remains visible at an appropriate level. It is not averaged away, forced into consensus, or attributed automatically to dishonesty.

Protected participation has a credible retaliation response. The system can investigate misuse without broadly exposing respondents, and powerful audiences are within the review boundary.

Accountability is preserved through authorized decision ownership, process records, appeal, and audit. Confidentiality protects vulnerable input rather than shielding unaccountable power.

Revisions remain distinguishable from deletion or retrospective rewriting. Evidence-based change can occur without pretending the earlier position never existed.

Subgroup analysis does not defeat privacy. Small cells, rare combinations, metadata, quotations, and temporal patterns receive explicit inference review.

The design is monitored for adaptation. A condition that initially elicited candor may lose validity as participants learn its scoring, disclosure, or enforcement pattern.

prose_target_outcomes:
The first target outcome is **decision-relevant independence**: private or protected input captures information that would otherwise be suppressed by early audience cues, without being misrepresented as final commitment.

The second is **legitimate learning and commitment**: participants can encounter reasons, revise positions, and enter an accountable shared decision without reputation locking or coerced unanimity.

The third is **interpretable divergence**: decision-makers know when public and private responses differ, how confidently, for whom, under what conditions, and with which plausible mechanisms.

The fourth is **proportionate privacy and exposure**: identity and content reach only audiences necessary for the declared purpose, with credible retention, access, correction, and deletion rules.

The fifth is **reduced retaliation and chilling**: adverse treatment, identity inference, withdrawal, nonresponse, and silence do not concentrate among lower-power or stigmatized participants.

The sixth is **accountable action**: protected evidence can lead to response, appeal, independent review, and repair; confidentiality is not an excuse for inaction or secret authority.

The seventh is **behavioral validity**: public commitments, reports, and evaluations predict or improve relevant follow-through rather than merely optimizing visible agreement.

The eighth is **adaptive integrity**: the architecture detects leakage, gaming, norm change, audience expansion, and technology change and can revise its conditions without erasing history.

Useful measures include condition divergence with uncertainty, response quality, nonresponse, revision after evidence, forecast accuracy, implementation rate, report resolution, privacy incidents, re-identification risk, retaliation indicators, subgroup burden, appeal outcomes, and participant understanding of disclosure rules. No single metric should dominate.

prose_parameter_dimensions:
**Audience scope** ranges from self-only, trusted interviewer, small team, accountable owner, affected community, organization, general public, to indefinitely searchable future audience. Expand only as far as the decision purpose requires.

**Identity exposure** ranges from anonymous, unlinkable session, pseudonymous, confidentially identified, role-identified, named to a bounded audience, to publicly named. Identity can differ by stage and data field.

**Timing** ranges from private-first, simultaneous conditions, public-first, delayed publication, post-outcome revelation, temporary confidentiality, to permanent restriction. Private-first is often useful for independent judgment, but public-first may be justified when shared evidence is prerequisite.

**Aggregation** ranges from raw individual response through themed qualitative synthesis, distributions, minimum-cell subgroup summaries, differentially private estimates, to a single collective statement. More aggregation protects identity but can erase minority or high-consequence detail.

**Persistence and searchability** range from ephemeral, session-only, time-limited, archived but restricted, discoverable by authorized audit, to public and indexed. Durable search changes the audience from present participants to unknown future interpreters.

**Commitment strength** ranges from exploratory expression, forecast, recommendation, consent, vote, pledge, assigned responsibility, to enforceable obligation. The visibility condition should match the meaning; exploratory doubt should not be treated as a pledge.

**Disclosure threshold** specifies when protected content or identity may be expanded because of imminent harm, legal duty, conflict review, fraud, credit, or consent. Thresholds need authority, necessity, proportionality, documentation, and review.

**Revision affordance** ranges from immutable commitment to visible correction, private correction, time-bounded withdrawal, or rolling update. High-stakes learning systems need revision without silent history rewriting.

prose_variants_and_near_names:
**Independent Baseline Then Public Commitment** is the general deliberative variant. Participants submit a protected first judgment, see aggregate or evidentiary information, deliberate, revise, and enter an accountable decision. The invariant is separation of independent information from binding commitment.

**Confidential Speak-Up Channel** serves errors, abuse, uncertainty, and unpopular risk. Identity access is least-necessary and independently governed. It becomes psychological-safety work when the primary intervention is leader response and team norm rather than visibility comparison.

**Anonymous Population Estimation** supports sensitive prevalence or preference distributions without named follow-up. It is not appropriate when the decision requires individual consent, eligibility, assignment, or urgent safeguarding unless another governed path supplies those functions.

**Blind Evaluation Then Attribution** masks identity or reputation cues during merit assessment, then restores credit, conflict review, and appeal later. Residual identity inference and unequal anonymity must be tested.

**Public Commitment with Private Revision Window** retains visible coordination while permitting doubt, changed circumstances, and correction without immediate reputation cost. The revision path must not become a covert veto or unrecorded reversal.

**Audience-Effect Field Experiment** estimates causal or quasi-causal effects across visibility conditions. Ethical assignment, nondeception where required, privacy, comparability, uncertainty, and stop rules are central.

Near names such as *audience effects*, *context-dependent behavior*, *public-private distinction*, *social desirability*, *preference falsification*, *evaluation apprehension*, *observer effect*, and *impression management* name phenomena or diagnostic cases. They do not by themselves name the whole solution lifecycle. The candidate’s aliases remain scoped to the intervention of calibrating visibility and behavior.

Anonymity, confidentiality, pseudonymity, privacy, secrecy, aggregation, identity masking, and delayed disclosure are not interchangeable variants. Each answers a different question about who can link identity to content, who can access it, what the participant expects, and whether the record persists.

name: Independent Baseline Then Public Commitment

variant_type: other

short_definition: Preserve independent evidence, permit shared learning, and finish with an accountable collective action.

still_same_parent_because: The first response precedes relevant social cues and remains distinct from the final commitment.

Confidential Speak-Up Channel

short_definition: Surface error, abuse, uncertainty, or unpopular knowledge under independent bounded custody.

distinctive_feature: Surface error, abuse, uncertainty, or unpopular knowledge under independent bounded custody.

still_same_parent_because: Identity access is least-necessary, retaliation-protected, and coupled to an accountable response path.

Anonymous Population Estimation

short_definition: Estimate sensitive prevalence or preference without identified commitment or follow-up.

distinctive_feature: Estimate sensitive prevalence or preference without identified commitment or follow-up.

still_same_parent_because: Output is aggregate, uncertainty-qualified, and not used to classify named individuals.

Blind Evaluation Then Attribution

short_definition: Delay identity and reputation cues during merit assessment while restoring credit and process accountability later.

still_same_parent_because: Masking, conflict verification, unmasking, credit, and appeal are separately governed stages.

name: Public Commitment with Private Revision Window

short_definition: Maintain coordination while allowing evidence-based correction without immediate reputation cost.

still_same_parent_because: Revision is protected but leaves an accountable history and does not silently undo others' reliance.

Audience-Effect Field Experiment

short_definition: Estimate the causal or quasi-causal effect of visibility and identity conditions before operational redesign.

still_same_parent_because: Conditions remain comparable, ethically assigned or observed, privacy-protected, and uncertainty-qualified.

near_names:
Public Private Context Calibration
Audience Effect Calibration
Reputation Pressure Context Design
Private To Public Response Calibration