The presentation, organized by the �鶹ӳ����ý 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 figure’s instructions to do something contrary to their own conscience — Rosenberg suggested that the greatest motivator of defiance to authority comes from one’s peers. She used several examples from around the world to illustrate how strength in numbers can transform a society.

Rosenberg gave as one example Florida’s teen smoking rates in the 1990s. Because teens view smoking as “a delivery system of rebellion,” 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 “to get people out of their houses and into the streets,” 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  in China and from 51 to 81 percent  in Ukraine, Rosenberg said.

Through all these examples, Rosenberg showed “the versatility of the social cure” and presented it as the solution to many of the world’s problems. It has the power to turn people into catalysts for change, she said.

“Peer pressure helps fill prisons. Peer pressure helps crowd bankruptcy courts. Peer pressure is a mighty and powerful force,” said Rosenberg. “But the antidote is more peer pressure.”

In addition to the �鶹ӳ����ý 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 �鶹ӳ����ý Global Peace and Security Studies Program, the �鶹ӳ����ý Nicholson School of Communication, �鶹ӳ����ý LIFE, the �鶹ӳ����ý Book Festival 2012 in association with the Morgridge International Reading Center, the �鶹ӳ����ý Political Science Department, the �鶹ӳ����ý International Services Center and the Global Connections Foundation.

Rosenberg, author of “Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World,” will talk at 3 p.m. in the Garden Key Room of the Student Union. The event, organized by the �鶹ӳ����ý Global Perspectives Office, is part of the 2011-2012 themes of “People Power, Politics and Global Change” and “Covering Crises from the Frontlines.” It is free and open to the public.

In her book, Rosenberg argues that peer pressure has the potential to help enact social change, improve education and oust dictators.

In 1987, she received a MacArthur Fellowship, which she used to move to South America. Her experiences there helped her write her first book, “Children of Cain: Violence and the Violent in Latin America.” Later, she won the Pulitzer Prize for a book about the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, “The Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s Ghosts After Communism.” 

She currently writes “Fixes,” an online column on solutions to social problems for The New York Times.

In addition to the Global Perspectives Office, sponsors and partners include Lawrence J. Chastang and the Chastang Foundation, the Sibille H. Pritchard Global Peace Fellowship program, the �鶹ӳ����ý Global Peace and Security Studies Program, the �鶹ӳ����ý Nicholson School of Communication, �鶹ӳ����ý LIFE, the �鶹ӳ����ý Book Festival 2012 in association with the Morgridge International Reading Center, the �鶹ӳ����ý Political Science Department, the �鶹ӳ����ý International Services Center and the Global Connections Foundation.