At a ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½ public forum Thursday, nearly 100 audience members learned how one βsocial cureβ has played a part in creating activists in former Yugoslavia, lowering smoking rates in Florida and helping to cure tuberculosis across continents. The cure? Peer pressure.
The presentation, organized by the ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½ Global Perspectives Office, featured Tina Rosenberg, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World. Despite its sometimes negative connotation, Rosenberg said, peer pressure has the potential to solve many problems once considered unsolvable.
Citing findings from the Milgram Experiment — which measured the willingness of subjects to follow an authority figureβs instructions to do something contrary to their own conscience — Rosenberg suggested that the greatest motivator of defiance to authority comes from oneβs peers. She used several examples from around the world to illustrate how strength in numbers can transform a society.
Rosenberg gave as one example Floridaβs teen smoking rates in the 1990s. Because teens view smoking as βa delivery system of rebellion,β researchers were able to promote not smoking as rebellion by publicizing the manipulation behind smoking advertisements, Rosenberg said. The result was cutting teen smoking rates by half, she said, the lowest rate in over a decade.
She also told the story of Otpur, a student-led and organized resistance group in the former Yugoslavia during the time of then-President Slobodan Milo. Through non-violent protests, this group discovered how βto get people out of their houses and into the streets,β she asserted. Otpur empowered them by creating a place to belong. Rosenberg said it was this sense of belonging that led to the success of this resistance group and the eventual fall of Milo.
The social cure also worked for tuberculosis patients in Ukraine and China. There, when the Directly Observed Treatment Shortcourse -program was implemented to supervise treatment adherence, the cure rates for tuberculosis went from 50 to 94 percent Β in China and from 51 to 81 percent Β in Ukraine, Rosenberg said.
Through all these examples, Rosenberg showed βthe versatility of the social cureβ and presented it as the solution to many of the worldβs problems. It has the power to turn people into catalysts for change, she said.
βPeer pressure helps fill prisons. Peer pressure helps crowd bankruptcy courts. Peer pressure is a mighty and powerful force,β said Rosenberg. βBut the antidote is more peer pressure.β
In addition to the ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½ Global Perspectives Office, sponsors and partners of the event included the Lawrence J. Chastang and the Chastang Foundation, the Sibille H. Pritchard Global Peace Fellowship program, the ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½ Global Peace and Security Studies Program, the ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½ Nicholson School of Communication, ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½ LIFE, the ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½ Book Festival 2012 in association with the Morgridge International Reading Center, the ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½ Political Science Department, the ΒιΆΉΣ³»΄«Γ½ International Services Center and the Global Connections Foundation.