
A visual example of social pressure, still from the 2004 film Mean Girls (see: mean girls model), a force per unit area, directed radially outward from the alpha female, in accordance with Newton's three laws of motion, causing a volume expansion.

A visual example of social pressure, still from the 2004 film Mean Girls (see: mean girls model), a force per unit area, directed radially outward from the alpha female, in accordance with Newton's three laws of motion, causing a volume expansion.

In human thermodynamics, social pressure is a human-scale physical equivalent of pressure as force per unit area exerted on one person (human molecule) or on the surface boundary of a system or group of people (human molecules). [1]

Overview
In the early 20th century, Henri Bergson, in his Creative Evolution (1907) and The Two Sources of Morality (1932), supposedly, discuss the idea of religion, held to together by a type of social pressure, in terms of energy, matter, and thermodynamics, in some way or another. [6]

In 1985, American physicist-engineer Arthur Iberall defined the idea of social pressure as such: [4]

“The potentials that drive the fluxes of the human social system, the most evident being the external and internal physical-chemical potentials, include a sheaf of potential-like components that represent the command-control system emergent as politics. On the whole, culture represents the social equivalent with the main processes of economics and politics being driven by a social pressure.”

Moreover:

“Social pressure wells from the interiors due to bulk viscosity to 'equilibrate' the external pressures.”
— Arthur Iberall (1993), Foundation for Social and Biological Evolution (pg. 217-19)

In 1992, American relationship theorist Teresa Brennan discusses social energy, emphasizing Sigmund Freud’s physical psyche model using the notion of conflicting forces complemented by bound energy and free energy. In her 1997 article “Social Pressure”, she argues that social pressure operates as physical energy, arguing that social pressures are pressures to conform but also those exerted on the psyche in the same way that physical pressures are exerted on the body. [2]

In 2005, German physicist Ingo Muller, in his version of socio-thermodynamics, gave a formulaic interpretation of the external pressures acting on a system of doves surrounded by hawks. He states “let the ∂V or part of the boundary be moveable under and external pressure”, and gives the following intuitive and heuristic equation for the change in the energy of the social system as a function of work done by pressures in moving the boundary: [3]

$\frac{dU}{dt} \Bigg|_{working} = -p_0 \frac{dV}{dt} \,$

where $p_0 \,$ is the external pressure acting on the system, U is the internal energy, V is the volume, and t is time.


A depiction of terms of peer pressure and social pressures, from a core fitness teen boot camp (ages 11-15), which states that: “Teens are under more pressure than ever before. Peer pressure and other external influences are at its highest, and self-esteem is at its lowest.” [5]

A depiction of terms of peer pressure and social pressures, from a core fitness teen boot camp (ages 11-15), which states that: “Teens are under more pressure than ever before. Peer pressure and other external influences are at its highest, and self-esteem is at its lowest.” [5]

Peer pressure
The adjacent diagram, and ad from a weekend teen boot camp, shows some of the common mental ideas (not talented enough, not good enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough), that carry the force (see: force carrier) of the peer pressure in the teen community, which is significantly higher than in the average society, being that junior high schools and high schools are force-ably closed systems (its the law that children attend school), in which the onset of hormonal activity initiates, exacerbating the pressure, indicating that three of the more dominate "pressures" in the teen community are: beauty, intelligence, talent, and being "good" in all of the various areas which humans are supposedly to excel in.

References
1. (a) Thims, Libb. (2007). Human Chemistry (Volume One) (social pressure, pgs. 61, 83, etc.). Morrisville, NC: LuLu.
(b) Thims, Libb. (2007). Human Chemistry (Volume Two) (social pressure, pgs. 410, 630, etc.). Morrisville, NC: LuLu.
2. (a) Oliver, Kelly. (2001). Witnessing: Beyond Recognition (pg. 196-197). University of Minnesota Press.
(b) Brennan, Teresa. (1997). “Social Pressure”, American Imago 54(3): 257-88.
3. Muller, Ingo. (2005). Energy and Entropy: A Universal Competition (socio-thermodynamics, pgs. 12, 203-221). Springer.
4. Iberall, Arthur S. (1985). “Outlining Social Physics for Modern Societies: Locating Cultures, Economics, and Politics: the Enlightenment Reconsidered.” (abstract), Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, 82(17): 5582-84.
5. Teen boot camp (advertisement) – TotalCoreFitCamp.com.
6. Arrington, Robert L. (2001). A Companion to the Philosophers (pgs. 166-67). Wiley-Blackwell.

External links
● Peer pressure – Wikipedia.