| Discipline: | Sociology |
| Awards: | Guggenheim Fellowship (2016) Golden Goose Award (2016) |
Peter Shawn Bearman (born 1956) is an American sociologist, notable for his contributions to the fields of adolescent health, research design, structural analysis, textual analysis, oral history and social networks. He is the Jonathan R. Cole Professor of Social Science in the Department of Sociology at Columbia University, the President of The American Assembly at Columbia University, as well as the director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics (INCITE). He is also the founding director of the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, and co-founding director of Columbia's Oral History Master of Arts Program, the first oral history masters program in the country. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008,[1] a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2014,[2] a Guggenheim Fellow in 2016,[3] and a member of the National Academy of Medicine in 2019.[4]
Bearman received his B.A. in sociology from Brown University in 1978, magna cum laude, and his M.A. (1982) and Ph.D. (1985) in sociology from Harvard University.[5]
After receiving his PhD, he was a lecturer at Harvard, before joining the sociology department at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. There he moved from assistant professor to full professor by 1996, before moving to Columbia University in 1997. At Columbia, Bearman was chair of the department of sociology from 2001-2005 and chair of the department of statistics from 2007-2008. Between 2002 and 2003, he was a visiting professor at the University of Genoa, Italy, the University of Munich. He has chaired 50 doctoral dissertations.[6]
Bearman was the founding director of the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, and is currently the director of INCITE, the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics at Columbia University. He was also co-founding director of Columbia's Oral History Master of Arts program[7] and co-founding director of the Global Health Research Center in Central Asia.
He is currently co-editor of the Oral History Series and the Middle Range Series, both published by Columbia University Press. He has also been on the editorial board of several scholarly journals, including the American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, and Sociological Theory.
Bearman, along with J. Richard Udry, designed the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), currently the only nationally-representative study of adolescent sexuality in the United States, which has yielded over a thousand published research articles and received the 2016 Golden Goose Award.
From these data, Bearman has published seminal articles on the sexual network, virginity pledges, same sex attraction, and adolescent suicidality. He is widely credited with bringing social network analysis methods to the demographic and population research community. He also introduced social network approaches to social sequence analysis through the concept of narrative networks.[8] [9] Bearman currently directs the Robert Wood Johnson Program in population health at Columbia University. He has received major grants and contracts from the National Science Foundation, the American Legacy Foundation, the Office of Population Affairs National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Child Health and Development, The Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation, totaling over $20,000,000.[10]
With co-authors Katherine Stovel, and James Moody, Bearman received the A Roger V. Gould Prize in 2004 for his article “Chains of Affection: The Structure of Adolescent Romantic and Sexual Networks.” The editorial board of the American Journal of Sociology selects one article published in the journal for a two-year period. They award the prize to an article that is "empirically rigorous, theoretically grounded, and lucidly written."[11]
In 2007, Bearman was awarded the National Institute of Health (NIH) Director's Pioneer Award to investigated the social determinants of the autism epidemic.
Bearman is the author of Doormen (University of Chicago Press, 2005), an ethnographic study of doormen in New York City, and is the co-author of Working for Respect: Community and Conflict at Walmart with Adam Reich (Columbia University Press, 2018). He is also co-editor of After the Fall, an oral history documenting New Yorkers' recollections of the September 11 attacks, as well as Robert Rauschenberg: An Oral History, which is to be published in 2019.
Reviewed in: European Sociological Review (Symposium), JASS, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Revista, Sociologica, Acta Sociological, Contemporary Sociology
The most recent among his 60+ peer-reviewed articles are:
2018 Zerubavel, Noam, Mark Hoffman, Adam Reich, Kevin Ochsner and Peter Bearman*. Neural Precursors of Future Liking and its Mutual Reciprocation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1802176115. 29632195 (PubMed)
2018 Balian, Hrag and Peter Bearman*. Pathways to Violence: Dynamics for the Continuation of Large-Scale Conflict. Sociological Theory. 36 (2), 210-220
2018 Hoffman, Mark, JP Cointet, Phiipp Brandt, Newton E. Key, and Peter Bearman*. The (Protestant) Bible, the (Printed) Sermon, and the Word(s): The Semantic Structure of the Conformist and Dissenting Bible, 1660-1780. Poetics. Volume 68, June 2018, Pages 89–103 (American Sociological Association Religion Section Distinguished Article Award, 2018)
2018 Bearman, Peter. Notes for Heuristics of Discovery. Sociologica. 12 (1), 13-19
2017 10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.11.010 . 27856120 . 5154797 . Gifts and influence: Conflict of interest policies and prescribing of psychotropic medications in the United States . Social Science & Medicine . 172 . 153–162 . 2017 . King . Marissa . Bearman . Peter S .
2016 10.15195/v4.a1 . Important Matters in Political Context . Sociological Science . 4 . 1–30 . 2017 . Lee . Byungkyu . Bearman . Peter . free .
2016 10.15195/v2.a19 . The Population Level Impacts of Differential Fertility Behavior of Parents of Children with Autism . Sociological Science . 2 . 398–419 . 2015 . Makovi . Kinga . Winter . Alix . Liu . Ka-Yuet . Bearman . Peter . free .
2015 10.1073/pnas.1511477112 . 26598684 . 4679039 . Neural mechanisms tracking popularity in real-world social networks . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . 112 . 49 . 15072–7 . 2015 . Zerubavel . Noam . Bearman . Peter S . Weber . Jochen . Ochsner . Kevin N . 2015PNAS..11215072Z . free .
2015 10.1073/pnas.1512221112 . 26261302 . 4568240 . Lexical shifts, substantive changes, and continuity in State of the Union discourse, 1790–2014 . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . 112 . 35 . 10837–44 . 2015 . Rule . Alix . Cointet . Jean-Philippe . Bearman . Peter S . 2015PNAS..11210837R . free .
2015 10.1371/journal.pone.0141338 . 26495967 . Can Sibling Sex Ratios Be Used as a Valid Test for the Prenatal Androgen Hypothesis of Autism Spectrum Disorders? . PLOS ONE . 10 . 10 . e0141338 . 2015 . Cheslack-Postava . Keely . Susser . Ezra . Liu . Kayuet . Bearman . Peter S . 4619748 . 2015PLoSO..1041338C . free .
2015 10.15195/v2.a19 . The Population Level Impacts of Differential Fertility Behavior of Parents of Children with Autism . Sociological Science . 2 . 398–419 . 2015 . Makovi . Kinga . Winter . Alix . Liu . Ka-Yuet . Bearman . Peter . free .
2015 10.2105/AJPH.2014.302383 . 25790396 . 4386543 . Association Between Assisted Reproductive Technology Conception and Autism in California, 1997–2007 . American Journal of Public Health . 105 . 5 . 963–71 . 2015 . Fountain . Christine . Zhang . Yujia . Kissin . Dmitry M . Schieve . Laura A . Jamieson . Denise J . Rice . Catherine . Bearman . Peter .
2015 10.15195/v2.a10 . Bringing Anomie Back In: Exceptional Events and Excess Suicide . Sociological Science . 2 . 186–210 . 2015 . Hoffman . Mark . Bearman . Peter . free .
2015 25997596 . 4553150 . 2015 . Schieve . L. A . Does Autism Diagnosis Age or Symptom Severity Differ Among Children According to Whether Assisted Reproductive Technology was Used to Achieve Pregnancy? . Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders . 45 . 9 . 2991–3003 . Fountain . C . Boulet . S. L . Yeargin-Allsopp . M . Kissin . D. M . Jamieson . D. J . Rice . C . Bearman . P . 10.1007/s10803-015-2462-1 .
2014 Kissin, DM*, Yujia Zhang, Christine Fountain, Peter Bearman and LA. Schieve. Association of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Treatment and Parental Infertility Diagnosis With Autism in ART-Conceived Children”. Human Reproduction. 30(2):454-65
2013 Hagen, Ryan, Kinga Makovi, and Peter Bearman* “The Influence of Political Dynamics on Southern Lynch Mob Formation and Lethality. Social forces 92 (2), 757-787.
2013 King, Marissa, Connor Essick, Peter Bearman*, and Joseph S. Ross. "Medical school gift restriction policies and physician prescribing of newly marketed psychotropic medications: difference-in-differences analysis." BMJ: British Medical Journal 346 (2013).
2013 Bearman. Peter*. “Genes Can Point to Environments That Matter to Advance Public Health. American Journal of Public Health: October 2013, Vol. 103, No. S1, pp. S11-S13.
2013 Hansen, Helena*, Zoe Donaldson, Bruce Link, Peter Bearman et al. “Independent Review Of Social And Population Variation In Mental Health Could Improve Diagnosis In DSM Revisions”.” Health Affairs. 32, NO. 5
2012 10.1177/0049124112460369 . 26166907 . Focal Points, Endogenous Processes, and Exogenous Shocks in the Autism Epidemic . Sociological Methods & Research . 44 . 2 . 272–305 . 2012 . Liu . Kayuet . Bearman . Peter S . 4495771 .
2012 10.1016/j.socscimed.2012.11.032 . 23267775 . Spatial clusters of autism births and diagnoses point to contextual drivers of increased prevalence . Social Science & Medicine . 95 . 87–96 . 2013 . Mazumdar . Soumya . Winter . Alix . Liu . Ka-Yuet . Bearman . Peter . 3612561 .
2012 10.1371/journal.pone.0041265 . 22859972 . 3408493 . The Disappearing Seasonality of Autism Conceptions in California . PLOS ONE . 7 . 7 . e41265 . 2012 . Mazumdar . Soumya . Liu . Ka-Yuet . Susser . Ezra . Bearman . Peter . 2012PLoSO...741265M . free .
2012 Fountain, Christine, Alix Winter, and Peter S. Bearman*. “Dynamic Trajectories of Children with Autism.” Pediatrics. 129(5):e111-e112
2012 Bearman, Peter. “On analytical sociology.” Sociologica. 6.1.
2011 Cheslack-Postava, Keely, Kayuet Liu, and Peter S. Bearman*. “Closely Spaced Pregnancies are Associated with Increased Odds of Autism in Sibling Births.” Pediatrics. 127(2): 246-253.
2011 Fountain, Christine and Peter Bearman*. “Risk as Social Context: Immigration Policy and Autism in California.” Sociological Forum. 26(2): 215-240.
2011 Keyes, Kerry, Ezra Susser, Keely Cheslak-Postava, Christine Fountain, Ka-Yuet Liu, Soumya Mazumdar, and Peter Bearman*. “Age, Period, and Cohort Effects in Autism Incidence in California from 1994 to 2005.” International Journal of Epidemiology. 2011;
2011 King, Marissa D. and Peter S. Bearman*. “Socioeconomic Status and the Increased Prevalence of Autism in California.” American Sociological Review. 76(2): 320-346.
2010 Fountain, Christine, Marissa D. King, and Peter S. Bearman*. “Age of Diagnosis for Autism: Individual and Community Factors across 10 Birth Cohorts.” Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. 65(6): 503-510.
2010 Shwed, Uri* and Peter S. Bearman*. “The Temporal Structure of Scientific Consensus Formation.” American Sociological Review. 75(6): 817-840.
(Best Article, ISS Paper Competition, 2010-12)