Peter S Bearman
Biographic Data
| ID | 3630573 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Peter S Bearman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Peter S |
| FAMILY NAME | Bearman |
| SIGNATURE | BEARMAN P S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Columbia University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 692 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 29 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Gifts and influence
Lexical shifts, substantive changes, and continuity in State of the Union discourse, 1790–2014
Significance A synoptic picture of the evolution of American politics is presented, based on analysis of the corpus of presidents’ State of the Union addresses, 1790–2014. The paper presents a strategy for automated text analysis that can identify meaningful categories in textual corpora that span long durées , where terms, concepts and language use changes, and evolution of topical structure is a priori unknown. Discourse streams identified as r…
Focal Points, Endogenous Processes, and Exogenous Shocks in the Autism Epidemic
Autism prevalence has increased rapidly in the United States during the past two decades. We have previously shown that the diffusion of information about autism through spatially proximate social relations has contributed significantly to the epidemic. This study expands on this finding by identifying the focal points for interaction that drive the proximity effect on subsequent diagnoses. We then consider how diffusion dynamics through interact…
Genes Can Point to Environments That Matter to Advance Public Health
Symmetry Is Beautiful
Age of diagnosis for autism
BACKGROUND: The incidence of autism rose dramatically between 1992 and 2001, while the age at which children were first diagnosed declined. During this period the size and composition of the autism caseload has changed, but little is known about whether the factors associated with the timing of diagnosis may also have shifted. Using a multilevel analysis strategy, the individual and community-level factors associated with age of diagnosis were mo…
Socioeconomic Status and the Increased Prevalence of Autism in California
The prevalence of autism has increased precipitously-roughly 10-fold in the past 40 years-yet no one knows exactly what caused this dramatic rise. Using a large and representative dataset that spans the California birth cohorts from 1992 through 2000, we examine individual and community resources associated with the likelihood of an autism diagnosis over time. This allows us to identify key social factors that have contributed to increased autism…
King Et Al. Respond
We appreciate interest in our article and are particularly grateful that Durkin et al. highlighted the importance of considering parameterization in research on parental age and autism. Making sense of parental age has always been complicated because homophily on age plays a significant role in partner selection. The decomposition presented in our article mitigates these statistical problems. As Durkin et al. noted, our decomposition utilizes a c…
The Temporal Structure of Scientific Consensus Formation
This article engages with problems that are usually opaque: What trajectories do scientific debates assume, when does a scientific community consider a proposition to be a fact, and how can we know that? We develop a strategy for evaluating the state of scientific contestation on issues. The analysis builds from Latour's black box imagery, which we observe in scientific citation networks. We show that as consensus forms, the importance of interna…
Social Influence and the Autism Epidemic
Despite a plethora of studies, we do not know why autism incidence has increased rapidly over the past two decades. Using California data, this study shows that children living very close to a child previously diagnosed with autism are more likely to be diagnosed with autism. An underlying social influence mechanism involving information diffusion drives this result, contributing to 16% of the increase in prevalence over 2000-2005. We eliminate c…
Estimated Autism Risk and Older Reproductive Age
Objectives. We sought to estimate the risk for autism associated with maternal and paternal age across successive birth cohorts. Methods. We linked birth records and autism diagnostic records from the California Department of Developmental Services for children born in California between 1992 and 2000 to calculate the risk associated with maternal and paternal age for each birth cohort as well as for the pooled data. Results. The categorical risk…
Fresh Starts
Seemingly endless tinkering and adjustment of the structure of education in the United States over the past century have led to the adoption of different school forms (grouping particular grades into separate schools) at different times. These different school forms necessitate transitions between schools (e.g., from a middle school to a high school), which, prior research has argued, have detrimental effects on students’ well‐being. In this arti…
Suicide and Friendships Among American Adolescents
Objectives. We investigated the relationship between friendships and suicidality among male and female adolescents. Methods. We analyzed friendship data on 13 465 adolescents from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health to explore the relationship between friendship and suicidal ideation and suicide attempts. We controlled for known factors associated with suicidality. Results. Having had a friend who committed suicide increased the…
Chains of Affection
Recognizing the actual structure of sexual networks is critical for modeling the potential for disease transmission, if disease is spread via sexual contact. This article reports the structure of an adolescent romantic and sexual network in a population of over 800 adolescents residing in a mid-sized town in the mid-western United States. Precise images and measures of network characteristics are derived from reports of relationships that occurre…
Opposite-Sex Twins and Adolescent Same-Sex Attraction
The etiology of human same‐sex romantic attraction is generally framed in terms of (1) social influences, (2) genetic influences, or (3) hormonal influences. In this article, we show that adolescent males who are opposite‐sex twins are twice as likely as expected to report same‐sex attraction; and that the pattern of concordance (similarity across pairs) of same‐sex preference for sibling pairs does not suggest genetic influence independent of so…
Promising the Future
Since 1993, in response to a movement sponsored by the Southern Baptist Church, over 2.5 million adolescents have taken public “virginity” pledges, in which they promise to abstain from sex until marriage. This paper explores the effect of those pledges on the transition to first intercourse. Adolescents who pledge are much less likely to have intercourse than adolescents who do not pledge. The delay effect is substantial. On the other hand, the …
Becoming a Nazi
The Structure and Dynamics of Movement Participation
We develop a dynamic network model of collective action that explains how collective action can arise in the absence of selective incentives or disincentives from the voluntary action of rational actors in large groups.We show that the search for balance in social interaction among interdependent actors can yield a cascade of activism and result in a successful social movement.The characteristics of actors critical for movement success are identi…
Relations into Rhetorics
Bearman (sociology, U. of North Carolina) shows how from the mid-16th to the mid-17th century, kinship ties were replaced by client-patron relations as the primary mechanism of power within the gentry of the English countryside, and how that change laid the groundwork for the civil war. As the gentr
Relations into Rhetorics
The structure of social protest, 1961–1983
Freak Show
From 1840 until 1940, freak shows by the hundreds crisscrossed the United States, from the smallest towns to the largest cities, exhibiting their casts of dwarfs, giants, Siamese twins, bearded ladies, savages, snake charmers, fire eaters, and other oddities. By today's standards such displays would be considered cruel and exploitative--the pornography of disability. Yet for one hundred years the freak show was widely accepted as one of America's…
Issues and Alternatives in Comparative Social Research
The Structure of Opportunity
Models that allow the decomposition of mobility into its structural and exchange components are used to identify the structure, and consequences, of middle-class intergenerational mobility in preindustrial (1548-1689) Norwich, England. Dramatic shifts in the mobility opportunities of sons over time are seen to yield distinct political outcomes. Political stability is associated with almost universal upward mobility in the period from 1548 to 1589…
A Matter of Record
1. Social Research and Documentary Sources 2. Assessing Documentary Sources 3. The Use of Documents in Social Research 4. The Official Realm: Public and Private 5. Administrative Routines and Situated Decisions 6. Explorations in Official Documents 7. The Public Sphere and Mass Communications 8. Personal Documents undergraduates and academics in sociology, history, geography, humanities some general readership among amateurs in family history and…
Suicide and Friendships Among American Adolescents
Objectives. We investigated the relationship between friendships and suicidality among male and female adolescents. Methods. We analyzed friendship data on 13 465 adolescents from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health to explore the relationship between friendship and suicidal ideation and suicide attempts. We controlled for known factors associated with suicidality. Results. Having had a friend who committed suicide increased the…
Chains of Affection
Recognizing the actual structure of sexual networks is critical for modeling the potential for disease transmission, if disease is spread via sexual contact. This article reports the structure of an adolescent romantic and sexual network in a population of over 800 adolescents residing in a mid-sized town in the mid-western United States. Precise images and measures of network characteristics are derived from reports of relationships that occurre…
Promising the Future
Since 1993, in response to a movement sponsored by the Southern Baptist Church, over 2.5 million adolescents have taken public “virginity” pledges, in which they promise to abstain from sex until marriage. This paper explores the effect of those pledges on the transition to first intercourse. Adolescents who pledge are much less likely to have intercourse than adolescents who do not pledge. The delay effect is substantial. On the other hand, the …
The Temporal Structure of Scientific Consensus Formation
This article engages with problems that are usually opaque: What trajectories do scientific debates assume, when does a scientific community consider a proposition to be a fact, and how can we know that? We develop a strategy for evaluating the state of scientific contestation on issues. The analysis builds from Latour's black box imagery, which we observe in scientific citation networks. We show that as consensus forms, the importance of interna…
Becoming a Nazi
The social structure of suicide
Social Influence and the Autism Epidemic
Despite a plethora of studies, we do not know why autism incidence has increased rapidly over the past two decades. Using California data, this study shows that children living very close to a child previously diagnosed with autism are more likely to be diagnosed with autism. An underlying social influence mechanism involving information diffusion drives this result, contributing to 16% of the increase in prevalence over 2000-2005. We eliminate c…
Socioeconomic Status and the Increased Prevalence of Autism in California
The prevalence of autism has increased precipitously-roughly 10-fold in the past 40 years-yet no one knows exactly what caused this dramatic rise. Using a large and representative dataset that spans the California birth cohorts from 1992 through 2000, we examine individual and community resources associated with the likelihood of an autism diagnosis over time. This allows us to identify key social factors that have contributed to increased autism…
Fresh Starts
Seemingly endless tinkering and adjustment of the structure of education in the United States over the past century have led to the adoption of different school forms (grouping particular grades into separate schools) at different times. These different school forms necessitate transitions between schools (e.g., from a middle school to a high school), which, prior research has argued, have detrimental effects on students’ well‐being. In this arti…
Desertion as Localism
Drawing from the experiences of 3,126 enlisted men from North Carolina who fought for the Confederacy in the U.S. Civil War, this article focuses on the determinants of desertion. I argue that men deserted because their identity as Southerners was eroded by an emergent localism, sustained and organized within the Confederate army. Desertion rates were highest in companies that evidenced a high degree of local homogeneity — company solidarity thus…
Age of diagnosis for autism
BACKGROUND: The incidence of autism rose dramatically between 1992 and 2001, while the age at which children were first diagnosed declined. During this period the size and composition of the autism caseload has changed, but little is known about whether the factors associated with the timing of diagnosis may also have shifted. Using a multilevel analysis strategy, the individual and community-level factors associated with age of diagnosis were mo…
Opposite-Sex Twins and Adolescent Same-Sex Attraction
The etiology of human same‐sex romantic attraction is generally framed in terms of (1) social influences, (2) genetic influences, or (3) hormonal influences. In this article, we show that adolescent males who are opposite‐sex twins are twice as likely as expected to report same‐sex attraction; and that the pattern of concordance (similarity across pairs) of same‐sex preference for sibling pairs does not suggest genetic influence independent of so…
Estimated Autism Risk and Older Reproductive Age
Objectives. We sought to estimate the risk for autism associated with maternal and paternal age across successive birth cohorts. Methods. We linked birth records and autism diagnostic records from the California Department of Developmental Services for children born in California between 1992 and 2000 to calculate the risk associated with maternal and paternal age for each birth cohort as well as for the pooled data. Results. The categorical risk…
Gifts and influence
Focal Points, Endogenous Processes, and Exogenous Shocks in the Autism Epidemic
Autism prevalence has increased rapidly in the United States during the past two decades. We have previously shown that the diffusion of information about autism through spatially proximate social relations has contributed significantly to the epidemic. This study expands on this finding by identifying the focal points for interaction that drive the proximity effect on subsequent diagnoses. We then consider how diffusion dynamics through interact…
Genes Can Point to Environments That Matter to Advance Public Health
The Structure of Opportunity
Models that allow the decomposition of mobility into its structural and exchange components are used to identify the structure, and consequences, of middle-class intergenerational mobility in preindustrial (1548-1689) Norwich, England. Dramatic shifts in the mobility opportunities of sons over time are seen to yield distinct political outcomes. Political stability is associated with almost universal upward mobility in the period from 1548 to 1589…
Symmetry Is Beautiful
Social Organization of an Urban Grants Economy
Social Structures
A Matter of Record
1. Social Research and Documentary Sources 2. Assessing Documentary Sources 3. The Use of Documents in Social Research 4. The Official Realm: Public and Private 5. Administrative Routines and Situated Decisions 6. Explorations in Official Documents 7. The Public Sphere and Mass Communications 8. Personal Documents undergraduates and academics in sociology, history, geography, humanities some general readership among amateurs in family history and…
Desertion as Localism
Drawing from the experiences of 3,126 enlisted men from North Carolina who fought for the Confederacy in the U.S. Civil War, this article focuses on the determinants of desertion. I argue that men deserted because their identity as Southerners was eroded by an emergent localism, sustained and organized within the Confederate army. Desertion rates were highest in companies that evidenced a high degree of local homogeneity — company solidarity thus…
The social structure of suicide
Issues and Alternatives in Comparative Social Research
The Structure of Opportunity
Models that allow the decomposition of mobility into its structural and exchange components are used to identify the structure, and consequences, of middle-class intergenerational mobility in preindustrial (1548-1689) Norwich, England. Dramatic shifts in the mobility opportunities of sons over time are seen to yield distinct political outcomes. Political stability is associated with almost universal upward mobility in the period from 1548 to 1589…
The structure of social protest, 1961–1983
Freak Show
From 1840 until 1940, freak shows by the hundreds crisscrossed the United States, from the smallest towns to the largest cities, exhibiting their casts of dwarfs, giants, Siamese twins, bearded ladies, savages, snake charmers, fire eaters, and other oddities. By today's standards such displays would be considered cruel and exploitative--the pornography of disability. Yet for one hundred years the freak show was widely accepted as one of America's…
Relations into Rhetorics
Bearman (sociology, U. of North Carolina) shows how from the mid-16th to the mid-17th century, kinship ties were replaced by client-patron relations as the primary mechanism of power within the gentry of the English countryside, and how that change laid the groundwork for the civil war. As the gentr
Relations into Rhetorics
The Structure and Dynamics of Movement Participation
We develop a dynamic network model of collective action that explains how collective action can arise in the absence of selective incentives or disincentives from the voluntary action of rational actors in large groups.We show that the search for balance in social interaction among interdependent actors can yield a cascade of activism and result in a successful social movement.The characteristics of actors critical for movement success are identi…
Becoming a Nazi
Promising the Future
Since 1993, in response to a movement sponsored by the Southern Baptist Church, over 2.5 million adolescents have taken public “virginity” pledges, in which they promise to abstain from sex until marriage. This paper explores the effect of those pledges on the transition to first intercourse. Adolescents who pledge are much less likely to have intercourse than adolescents who do not pledge. The delay effect is substantial. On the other hand, the …
Opposite-Sex Twins and Adolescent Same-Sex Attraction
The etiology of human same‐sex romantic attraction is generally framed in terms of (1) social influences, (2) genetic influences, or (3) hormonal influences. In this article, we show that adolescent males who are opposite‐sex twins are twice as likely as expected to report same‐sex attraction; and that the pattern of concordance (similarity across pairs) of same‐sex preference for sibling pairs does not suggest genetic influence independent of so…
Suicide and Friendships Among American Adolescents
Objectives. We investigated the relationship between friendships and suicidality among male and female adolescents. Methods. We analyzed friendship data on 13 465 adolescents from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health to explore the relationship between friendship and suicidal ideation and suicide attempts. We controlled for known factors associated with suicidality. Results. Having had a friend who committed suicide increased the…
Chains of Affection
Recognizing the actual structure of sexual networks is critical for modeling the potential for disease transmission, if disease is spread via sexual contact. This article reports the structure of an adolescent romantic and sexual network in a population of over 800 adolescents residing in a mid-sized town in the mid-western United States. Precise images and measures of network characteristics are derived from reports of relationships that occurre…
Fresh Starts
Seemingly endless tinkering and adjustment of the structure of education in the United States over the past century have led to the adoption of different school forms (grouping particular grades into separate schools) at different times. These different school forms necessitate transitions between schools (e.g., from a middle school to a high school), which, prior research has argued, have detrimental effects on students’ well‐being. In this arti…
Estimated Autism Risk and Older Reproductive Age
Objectives. We sought to estimate the risk for autism associated with maternal and paternal age across successive birth cohorts. Methods. We linked birth records and autism diagnostic records from the California Department of Developmental Services for children born in California between 1992 and 2000 to calculate the risk associated with maternal and paternal age for each birth cohort as well as for the pooled data. Results. The categorical risk…
King Et Al. Respond
We appreciate interest in our article and are particularly grateful that Durkin et al. highlighted the importance of considering parameterization in research on parental age and autism. Making sense of parental age has always been complicated because homophily on age plays a significant role in partner selection. The decomposition presented in our article mitigates these statistical problems. As Durkin et al. noted, our decomposition utilizes a c…
The Temporal Structure of Scientific Consensus Formation
This article engages with problems that are usually opaque: What trajectories do scientific debates assume, when does a scientific community consider a proposition to be a fact, and how can we know that? We develop a strategy for evaluating the state of scientific contestation on issues. The analysis builds from Latour's black box imagery, which we observe in scientific citation networks. We show that as consensus forms, the importance of interna…
Social Influence and the Autism Epidemic
Despite a plethora of studies, we do not know why autism incidence has increased rapidly over the past two decades. Using California data, this study shows that children living very close to a child previously diagnosed with autism are more likely to be diagnosed with autism. An underlying social influence mechanism involving information diffusion drives this result, contributing to 16% of the increase in prevalence over 2000-2005. We eliminate c…
Age of diagnosis for autism
BACKGROUND: The incidence of autism rose dramatically between 1992 and 2001, while the age at which children were first diagnosed declined. During this period the size and composition of the autism caseload has changed, but little is known about whether the factors associated with the timing of diagnosis may also have shifted. Using a multilevel analysis strategy, the individual and community-level factors associated with age of diagnosis were mo…
Socioeconomic Status and the Increased Prevalence of Autism in California
The prevalence of autism has increased precipitously-roughly 10-fold in the past 40 years-yet no one knows exactly what caused this dramatic rise. Using a large and representative dataset that spans the California birth cohorts from 1992 through 2000, we examine individual and community resources associated with the likelihood of an autism diagnosis over time. This allows us to identify key social factors that have contributed to increased autism…
Symmetry Is Beautiful
Sociology (19 works) · Psychology (14 works) · Political science (10 works) · Law (8 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · Demography (7 works) · Developmental psychology (7 works) · Autism (6 works) · Autism Spectrum Disorder Research (6 works) · Economics (6 works)