Passage 1

Come on--Everybody′s doing it. That whispered message, half invitation and half forcing, iswhat most of us think of when we hear the words peer pressure. It usually leads to no good--drinking, drugs and casual sex. But in her new book Join the Club, Tina Rosenbe~ contends thatpeer pressure can also be a positive force through what she calls the social cure, in whichorganizations and officials use the power of group dynamics to help individuals improve their livesand possibly the word.

Rosenberg, the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, offers a host of examples of the social cure inaction: In South Carolina, a state-sponsored antismoking program called Rage Against the Haze setsout to make cigarettes uncool. In South Africa, an HIV-prevention initiative known as loveLiferecruits young people to promote safe sex among their peers.

The idea seems promising, and Rosenberg is a perceptive observer. Her critique of the lamenessof many pubic-health campaigns is spot-on: they fail to mobilize peer pressure for healthy habits,and they demonstrate a seriously flawed understanding of psychology. "Dare to be different, pleasedon′t smoke!" pleads one billboard campaign aimed at reducing smoking among teenagers--teenagers, who desire nothing more than fitting in. Rosenberg argues convincingly that public-healthadvocates ought to take a page from advertisers, so skilled at applying peer pressure.

But on the general effectiveness of the social cure, Rosenberg is less persuasive. Join the Clubis filled with too much irrelevant detail and not enough exploration of the social and biologicalfactors that make peer pressure so powerful. The most glaring flaw of the social cure as it′spresented here is that it doesn′t work very well for very long. Rage Against the Haze failed oncestate funding was cut. Evidence that the loveLife program produces lasting changes is limited andmixed.

There′ s no doubt that our peer groups exert enormous influence on our behavior. An emergingbody of research shows that positive health habits--as well as negative ones--spread throughnetworks of friends via social communication. This is a subtle form of peer pressure: weunconsciously imitate the behavior we see every day.

Far less certain, however, is how successfully experts and bureaucrats can select our peergroups and steer their activities in virtuous directions. It′s like the teacher who breaks up thetroublemakers in the back row by pairing them with better-behaved classmates. The tactic neverreally works. And that′s the problem with a social cure engineered from the outside: in the realworld, as in school, we insist on choosing our own friends.

According to the first paragraph, peer pressure often emerges as __________.

• A.a supplement to the social cure
• B.a stimulus to group dynamics
• C.an obstacle to social progress
• D.a cause of undesirable behaviors