Mark Beeman
Biographic Data
| ID | 752009 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mark Beeman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mark |
| FAMILY NAME | Beeman |
| SIGNATURE | BEEMAN M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Northwestern University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0955-5307 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 33 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Historical continuities of exclusion: Texas, Asian communities and the politics of belonging
This article traces the continuity of anti-Asian exclusion in the U.S. through the case of Texas land legislation. In 1921, Texas enacted the South’s first land ban targeting Japanese families, drawing on Western, particularly Californian, precedents. More than a century later, in 2025, the legislature passed Senate Bill 17, barring land purchases by nationals of selected countries, with China as the main focus. Although presented as a matter of …
The white matter of Aha! moments
Insights, or "Aha!" moments, are a crucial aspect of idea generation in creative cognition. While functional neuroimaging studies have identified brain regions involved in these insights, their white matter substrate remains unexplored. This study employed diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to investigate how white matter microstructure—measured by fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD)—relates to individuals’ tendency to solve Compound…
A MAD method to assess idea novelty: Improving validity of automatic scoring using maximum associative distance (MAD)
Solving problems with an Aha! increases risk preference
Solving problems with insight culminates in an “Aha! moment”: a feeling of confidence and pleasure. In daily life, insights are often followed by important decisions, such as deciding what to do with a new idea. Here, we investigated whether having an Aha! moment affects subsequent decision-making. Because Aha! moments tend to elicit positive affect, which is generally associated with an increased risk-taking tendency, we hypothesized that people…
Uncovering the Interplay of Oscillatory Processes During Creative Problem Solving: A Dynamic Modeling Approach
To solve a new problem, people spontaneously engage multiple cognitive processes. Previous work has identified a diverse set of oscillatory components critical at different stages of creative problem solving. In this project, we use hidden state modeling to untangle the roles of oscillation processes over time as people solve puzzles. Building on earlier work, we further developed analytical methods, such as incorporating source separating techni…
The Cognitive Neuroscience of Insight
Insight occurs when a person suddenly reinterprets a stimulus, situation, or event to produce a nonobvious, nondominant interpretation. This can take the form of a solution to a problem (an "aha moment"), comprehension of a joke or metaphor, or recognition of an ambiguous percept. Insight research began a century ago, but neuroimaging and electrophysiological techniques have been applied to its study only during the past decade. Recent work has r…
Evaluative and generative modes of thought during the creative process
An fMRI investigation of the neural correlates underlying the processing of novel metaphoric expressions
Neural Activity When People Solve Verbal Problems with Insight
People sometimes solve problems with a unique process called insight, accompanied by an "Aha!" experience. It has long been unclear whether different cognitive and neural processes lead to insight versus noninsight solutions, or if solutions differ only in subsequent subjective feeling. Recent behavioral studies indicate distinct patterns of performance and suggest differential hemispheric involvement for insight and noninsight solutions. Subject…
Normative data for 144 compound remote associate problems
Challenging Child Labor: Transnational Activism and India's Carpet Industry
Transnational movements have become an important component of an emerging and relatively recently theorized transnational civil society in the field of international relations. Nongovernmental organizations, social movements, and social activists concerned with the global issues of poverty, environment, and human rights have created an intellectual and political global space outside the national territorial space to give voice to their concerns o…
Educating Students about Affirmative Action: An Analysis of University Sociology Texts
Affirmative action policy in the United States has recently come under intense political attack. Opponents have developed strategies to eliminate affirmative action using state referendums, often engaging in misleading public campaigns. In this political atmosphere, the role of education is significant. For many of our students, introductory sociology may be one of the few courses in which they are exposed to serious academic discussions about af…
Right Hemisphere Language Comprehension
"Revisiting "The Eye of the Storm: The Subtleties of Gender Bias
The award-winning documentary The Eye of the Storm has been used in the classroom to sensitize students to the dynamics of discrimination and prejudice. The authors argue that instructors can guide their classes beyond the conventional approach to this important teaching tool. While intending to focus on discrimination based on color, the video unintentionally provides a documented classroom experience that is valuable to discussions of gender in…
Challenging Ethnic Stereotypes: A Classroom Exercise
Les AA. affirment que les stereotypes tendent a affecter les comportements de groupes. Ils proposent une methode permettant aux etudiants en sociologie d'evaluer le bien-fonde de ces stereotypes. Ils examinent un certain nombre de prejuges concernant certains peuples europeens et qui sont devenus obsoletes. Ils tentent, par ce biais, de montrer que ceux-ci evoluent et qu'ils visent toujours les minorites visibles. Ils invitent les etudiants a ref…
An fMRI investigation of the neural correlates underlying the processing of novel metaphoric expressions
Educating Students about Affirmative Action: An Analysis of University Sociology Texts
Affirmative action policy in the United States has recently come under intense political attack. Opponents have developed strategies to eliminate affirmative action using state referendums, often engaging in misleading public campaigns. In this political atmosphere, the role of education is significant. For many of our students, introductory sociology may be one of the few courses in which they are exposed to serious academic discussions about af…
Challenging Child Labor: Transnational Activism and India's Carpet Industry
Transnational movements have become an important component of an emerging and relatively recently theorized transnational civil society in the field of international relations. Nongovernmental organizations, social movements, and social activists concerned with the global issues of poverty, environment, and human rights have created an intellectual and political global space outside the national territorial space to give voice to their concerns o…
"Revisiting "The Eye of the Storm: The Subtleties of Gender Bias
The award-winning documentary The Eye of the Storm has been used in the classroom to sensitize students to the dynamics of discrimination and prejudice. The authors argue that instructors can guide their classes beyond the conventional approach to this important teaching tool. While intending to focus on discrimination based on color, the video unintentionally provides a documented classroom experience that is valuable to discussions of gender in…
Challenging Ethnic Stereotypes: A Classroom Exercise
Les AA. affirment que les stereotypes tendent a affecter les comportements de groupes. Ils proposent une methode permettant aux etudiants en sociologie d'evaluer le bien-fonde de ces stereotypes. Ils examinent un certain nombre de prejuges concernant certains peuples europeens et qui sont devenus obsoletes. Ils tentent, par ce biais, de montrer que ceux-ci evoluent et qu'ils visent toujours les minorites visibles. Ils invitent les etudiants a ref…
Challenging Ethnic Stereotypes: A Classroom Exercise
Les AA. affirment que les stereotypes tendent a affecter les comportements de groupes. Ils proposent une methode permettant aux etudiants en sociologie d'evaluer le bien-fonde de ces stereotypes. Ils examinent un certain nombre de prejuges concernant certains peuples europeens et qui sont devenus obsoletes. Ils tentent, par ce biais, de montrer que ceux-ci evoluent et qu'ils visent toujours les minorites visibles. Ils invitent les etudiants a ref…
"Revisiting "The Eye of the Storm: The Subtleties of Gender Bias
The award-winning documentary The Eye of the Storm has been used in the classroom to sensitize students to the dynamics of discrimination and prejudice. The authors argue that instructors can guide their classes beyond the conventional approach to this important teaching tool. While intending to focus on discrimination based on color, the video unintentionally provides a documented classroom experience that is valuable to discussions of gender in…
Right Hemisphere Language Comprehension
Educating Students about Affirmative Action: An Analysis of University Sociology Texts
Affirmative action policy in the United States has recently come under intense political attack. Opponents have developed strategies to eliminate affirmative action using state referendums, often engaging in misleading public campaigns. In this political atmosphere, the role of education is significant. For many of our students, introductory sociology may be one of the few courses in which they are exposed to serious academic discussions about af…
Challenging Child Labor: Transnational Activism and India's Carpet Industry
Transnational movements have become an important component of an emerging and relatively recently theorized transnational civil society in the field of international relations. Nongovernmental organizations, social movements, and social activists concerned with the global issues of poverty, environment, and human rights have created an intellectual and political global space outside the national territorial space to give voice to their concerns o…
Normative data for 144 compound remote associate problems
Neural Activity When People Solve Verbal Problems with Insight
People sometimes solve problems with a unique process called insight, accompanied by an "Aha!" experience. It has long been unclear whether different cognitive and neural processes lead to insight versus noninsight solutions, or if solutions differ only in subsequent subjective feeling. Recent behavioral studies indicate distinct patterns of performance and suggest differential hemispheric involvement for insight and noninsight solutions. Subject…
An fMRI investigation of the neural correlates underlying the processing of novel metaphoric expressions
Evaluative and generative modes of thought during the creative process
The Cognitive Neuroscience of Insight
Insight occurs when a person suddenly reinterprets a stimulus, situation, or event to produce a nonobvious, nondominant interpretation. This can take the form of a solution to a problem (an "aha moment"), comprehension of a joke or metaphor, or recognition of an ambiguous percept. Insight research began a century ago, but neuroimaging and electrophysiological techniques have been applied to its study only during the past decade. Recent work has r…
Uncovering the Interplay of Oscillatory Processes During Creative Problem Solving: A Dynamic Modeling Approach
To solve a new problem, people spontaneously engage multiple cognitive processes. Previous work has identified a diverse set of oscillatory components critical at different stages of creative problem solving. In this project, we use hidden state modeling to untangle the roles of oscillation processes over time as people solve puzzles. Building on earlier work, we further developed analytical methods, such as incorporating source separating techni…
Solving problems with an Aha! increases risk preference
Solving problems with insight culminates in an “Aha! moment”: a feeling of confidence and pleasure. In daily life, insights are often followed by important decisions, such as deciding what to do with a new idea. Here, we investigated whether having an Aha! moment affects subsequent decision-making. Because Aha! moments tend to elicit positive affect, which is generally associated with an increased risk-taking tendency, we hypothesized that people…
A MAD method to assess idea novelty: Improving validity of automatic scoring using maximum associative distance (MAD)
Historical continuities of exclusion: Texas, Asian communities and the politics of belonging
This article traces the continuity of anti-Asian exclusion in the U.S. through the case of Texas land legislation. In 1921, Texas enacted the South’s first land ban targeting Japanese families, drawing on Western, particularly Californian, precedents. More than a century later, in 2025, the legislature passed Senate Bill 17, barring land purchases by nationals of selected countries, with China as the main focus. Although presented as a matter of …
The white matter of Aha! moments
Insights, or "Aha!" moments, are a crucial aspect of idea generation in creative cognition. While functional neuroimaging studies have identified brain regions involved in these insights, their white matter substrate remains unexplored. This study employed diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to investigate how white matter microstructure—measured by fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD)—relates to individuals’ tendency to solve Compound…
Psychology (9 works) · Cognitive psychology (6 works) · Creativity in Education and Neuroscience (6 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Gender Studies (4 works) · Gender Studies (4 works) · Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies (4 works) · Neuroscience (4 works) · Social Psychology (4 works) · Sociology (4 works)