Tina Rosenberg in the book “Join the Club,” has examines the idea that human behavior is defined by our relationships with our acquaintances. Peer pressure, she finds, can lead to acts of great courage, or to great harm. But Rosenberg’s particular ambition is to unlock the secret of using it to “transform the world,” in the words of her subtitle.
But peer pressure alone cannot transform the world. After all, economic and political relationships often trump the interpersonal. The social cure is very costly in human time (peer strategies require considerable investments of hours and effort) and often in dollars as well. All the examples that she brought in her book (advertising of the non-smoking or the improvement of the Math learning) was invested by the government. Now on it is very difficult to create clubs or join them voluntary.
The success of peer pressure, moreover, usually depends on selfless leaders who create the organizations that mobilize and inspire a community. Of course, such leaders are hard to find; and many of the programs described by Rosenberg could not really survive because of the funds.
Rosenberg reminds us that the success of a society depends on the strength of its communities, because the development of our best traits — trust, honesty, foresight, responsibility and compassion — depends upon our close interactions with others.
In this time when our life it is connected with political, profitable relationships it is very difficult to create club which should be follow by the mass and which will help to “transform the world”. Usually this kind of clubs has success for a short time and need to have a really strong “motive” to take the people connected to them.
I don’t think that we need the government or politics for that matter to create a positive peer pressure. There are many examples where the community itself creates this positive pressure without any help from the government. I have one cousin who lives in Canada. She tells me that one of the main reasons why people live there is to keep a better garden than that of their neighbours. People spend most of their free time planting wonderful flowers in the garden, cutting the grass etc… So, in there the peer pressure has brought a positive result, for the environment, and for esthetics.
YanıtlaSilYes Ermelinda you are right I agree that groups are successful for a short time but as you said when they have a strong motive they stick together and is this motivation as a form of belonging that makes extraordinary thing happen
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