Come on — Everybody’s doing it. That whispered message, half invitation and half forcing, is what most of us think of when we he

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问题    Come on — Everybody’s doing it. That whispered message, half invitation and half forcing, is what 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 Rosenberg contends that peer pressure can also be a positive force through what she calls the social cure, in which organizations and officials use the power of group dynamics to help individuals improve their lives and possibly the world.
   Rosenberg, the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, offers a host of examples of the social cure in action: In South Carolina, a state-sponsored antismoking program called Rage Against the Haze sets out to make cigarettes uncool. In South Africa, an HIV-prevention initiative known as loveLife recruits young people to promote safe sex among their peers.
   The idea seems promising, and Rosenberg is a perceptive observer. Her critique of the lameness of 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, please don’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-health advocates 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 Club is filled with too much irrelevant detail and not enough exploration of the social and biological factors that make peer pressure so powerful. The most glaring flaw of the social cure as it’s presented here is that it doesn’t work very well for very long. Rage Against the Haze failed once state funding was cut. Evidence that the lovelife program produces lasting changes is limited and mixed.
   There’s no doubt that our peer groups exert enormous influence on our behavior. An emerging body of research shows that positive health habits — as well as negative ones — spread through networks of friends via social communication. This is a subtle form of peer pressure: we unconsciously imitate the behavior we see every day.
   Far less certain, however, is how successfully experts and bureaucrats can select our peer groups and steer their activities in virtuous directions. It’s like the teacher who breaks up the troublemakers in the back row by pairing them with better-behaved classmates. The tactic never really works. And that’s the problem with a social cure engineered from the outside: in the real world, as in school, we insist on choosing our own friends.

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答案 来吧,大家都这么做呢!——当听到“同伴压力”这个词时,我们大部分人就会想到这句半推半请的耳语。通常,同伴压力带来的绝非好事——酗酒、吸毒和性滥交。但蒂娜-罗森博格在其新书《加入俱乐部》中认为,同伴压力也可以是一种正面的力量,她把这称为“社交疗法”,各种组织和官员可以善用这种群体互动的力量,帮助个人改善生活,乃至整个世界。 普利策奖得主罗森博格列举了很多正在实施的社交疗法实例。比如,美国南卡罗来纳州有一个叫做“怒反烟雾”的州立反吸烟项目,旨在让人们觉得吸烟一点也不酷。南非的一项艾滋病预防项目“热爱生命”,招募年轻人在同伴之间宣传安全性行为。 罗森博格观察敏锐,她的观点看来前景无量。她对许多公共卫生宣传活动的缺陷的指责十分正确:没有调动同伴压力来让大家养成健康的习惯,同时,这些项目还显示了对人们心理的极其错误的理解。“要敢于与众不同,请勿吸烟!”这是一个广告牌的宣传语,旨在减少青少年吸烟,而青少年最向往的就是跟大家打成一片。罗森博格的看法很有说服力,她认为,公共健康倡导者们应该借鉴广告商谙熟善用“同伴压力”的做法。 但是,从社交疗法的总体有效性来说,罗森博格就没有那样具有说服力了。《加入俱乐部》书中充斥了大量无关的细节,而针对让同伴压力影响如此强大的社会和生物学因素的研究却明显不足。如果按照书中所述.社交疗法最明显的缺陷就是此法无法长期有效。州府资金缩减后,“怒反烟雾”项目立即停摆:而“热爱生命”项目是否能产生持久的改变,其相关证据有限,且毁誉参半。 毫无疑问,同伴群体会对我们的行为产生巨大的影响。目前不断涌现出的研究表明,健康习惯(无论好坏)会通过社会交往传达到整个朋友圈。这是一种隐性的同伴压力:我们会在无意中模仿每天所看到的行为。 但是,专家和官员选择我们的同伴群体,并将其行为导向正面的方向,这样做能有多成功还远不能确定。这样做就像是老师把后排捣乱的学生分开,调至与行为良好的学生同坐一样。这个方法其实根本没有用。如果一个社交疗法是从外部开始设计的话,就会有一样的问题:在现实社会,跟在学校一样,我们会坚持自己选择朋友。

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