阅读理解 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 word.
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.

单选题 According to the first paragraph, peer pressure often emerges as______.

【正确答案】 D

【答案解析】细节题。文章第一段提到“It usually leads to no good—drinking，drugs and casual sex”，句中usually与题干中的often对应，leads to与D项中的cause对应，drinking，drugs and casual sex与D项中的否定成分undesirable behaviors对应，故D项“不良行为的诱因”正确，它是对原文的同义替换。A项“社会治疗的补充”，B项“群体活力的刺激”都是Rosenberg的新观点。C项“学校进步的障碍”是针对文章最后一段出的干扰项，且属于过度推断。

单选题 Rosenberg holds that public-health advocates should______.

【正确答案】 B

【答案解析】细节题。文章第三段最后一句提到“Rosenberg argues convincingly that public-health advocates ought to take a page from advertisers”，句中的argues和题干中的holds对应，public-health advocates和题干中的public advocates对应，ought to和should对应，且句中的take a page from与B项的learn from属于同义替换。所以，B项“学习广告人的经验”为正确答案。文中Rosenberg的态度是对健康运动倡导者表示批评，对广告人表示欣赏，C项“远离商业广告人”，D项“认识到广告的局限性”都与其态度相反。A项“招募职业广告人”原文根本没有提及。

单选题 In the author's view, Rosenberg's book fails to______.

【正确答案】 A

【答案解析】推断题。第四段提到“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”，即Join the Club这本书中充斥着太多无关的细节，却没有充分探索那些使同侪压力如此强大的社会和生物因素，因此只有A项“(未能)充分探究社会和生物因素”与之吻合，fails to adequately probe social and biological factors就是原文not enough exploration of the social and biological factors的同义再现。B项“(未能)有效避免社会治疗的缺点”原文未提及，C项“(未能)阐释政府资助的功能”和D项“(未能)产生持久的社会效果”属于张冠李戴。

单选题 Paragraph 5 shows that our imitation of behaviors

单选题 The author suggests in the last paragraph that the effect of peer pressure is______.

【正确答案】 D

【答案解析】态度题。文章最后一段第一句话指出，专家和政府官员能在多大程度上选择我们的同侪群体并能引导其行为走上正确的道德方向是难以确定的(far less certain)，接下来以教师让捣蛋鬼们换座和好学生坐在一起为例子说明“这个策略从来没有真正起作用”。从这里我们可以看出，作者对于同侪压力是否能产生效果其实是持怀疑态度的，故本题选D项“可疑的”。A项“有害的”，B项“有利的”，C项“深刻的”均不正确。