①Come 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.

②Rosenberg, 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.

③The idea seems promising, and Rosenberg is a perceptive observer. Her critique of the lameness of many public-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.

④But 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.

⑤There’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.

⑥Far 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. 

1.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.

解析：选D。D细节理解题。根据题目定位到第一段，可知同辈压力通常会导致酗酒、吸毒和随意性行为，D符合原文，故选D。

2.Rosenberg holds that public-health advocates should _________

A recruit professional advertisers.

B learn from advertisers’ experience.

C stay away from commercial advertisers.

D recognize the limitations of advertisements.

解析：选B。B细节理解题。根据Rosenberg和public-health advocates定位到第三段最后一句，可知罗森伯格认为公共卫生倡导者应该向善于施加同辈压力的广告商学习。take a page from意为“效仿，借鉴”，故选B。

3.In the author’s view, Rosenberg’s book fails to _________

A adequately probe social and biological factors.

B effectively evade the flaws of the social cure.

C illustrate the functions of state funding.

D produce a long-lasting social effect.

解析：选A。A细节理解题。根据第四段首两句可知，作者认为在社会治疗的总体效果方面，罗森伯格的观点不那么有说服力，他的书Join the Club充满太多无关的细节，对同辈压力的社会和生物因素探索却不够，故选A。

4.Paragraph 5 shows that our imitation of behaviors _________

A is harmful to our networks of friends.

B will mislead behavioral studies.

C occurs without our realizing it.

D can produce negative health habits.

解析：选C。C细节理解题。根据题目定位到第五段，可知这是一种微妙的同辈压力：我们无意识地模仿我们每天看到的行为。故选C。

5.The author suggests in the last paragraph that the effect of peer pressure is _________

A harmful.

B desirable.

C profound.

D questionable.

解析：选D。D观点态度题。根据题目定位到最后一段，专家和官僚们如何成功地选择我们的同辈群体，并引导他们的活动向良性方向发展，是不太确定的。故选D。