Bearman and Brückner have also identified a peculiar dilemma: in some schools, if too many teens pledge, the effort basically collapses. Pledgers apparently gather strength from the sense that they are an embattled minority; once their numbers exceed thirty per cent, and proclaimed chastity becomes the norm, that special identity is lost. With such a fragile formula, it’s hard to imagine how educators can ever get it right: once the self-proclaimed virgin clique hits the thirty-one-per-cent mark, suddenly it’s Sodom and Gomorrah.
That seems to suggest that once peer-pressure starts working for the effort in the general population, there is a corresponding rise in hypocrisy as a sort of peer-pressure-release valve, and that can even undermine the committed core.
This effect might be generalizable to other moral-suasion campaigns. This deserves studies and articles all by itself.
Bearman and Brückner have also identified a peculiar dilemma: in some schools, if too many teens pledge, the effort basically collapses. Pledgers apparently gather strength from the sense that they are an embattled minority; once their numbers exceed thirty per cent, and proclaimed chastity becomes the norm, that special identity is lost. With such a fragile formula, it’s hard to imagine how educators can ever get it right: once the self-proclaimed virgin clique hits the thirty-one-per-cent mark, suddenly it’s Sodom and Gomorrah.
That seems to suggest that once peer-pressure starts working for the effort in the general population, there is a corresponding rise in hypocrisy as a sort of peer-pressure-release valve, and that can even undermine the committed core.
This effect might be generalizable to other moral-suasion campaigns. This deserves studies and articles all by itself.