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YINS Seminar Archives: Peter Bearman (Oct. 15, 2014)
YINS Seminar Archives: Peter Bearman (Oct. 15, 2014)
“The brain basis of person perception in real-world social networks”
Speaker: Peter Bearman, Director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theories and Empirics (INCITE), Cole Professor of Social Science, Co-Director of the Health & Society Scholars Program, Mellon Interdisciplinary Training Progrsm, and OHMA at Columbia University
Humans are a fundamentally social species, and the social networks in which we are each embedded constitute significant determinants of our physical and psychological well-being. Navigating interactions within these social networks requires efficient computational mechanisms for processing social information about network members as well as our and others’ relations to them. The talk describes some early findings in a larger study investigating the neural signatures underlying these social-cognitive processes critical for person perception and action in diverse real-world social networks.
This presentation was a part of the YINS Distinguished Lecturer series on October 15, 2014.
A specialist in network analysis, he co-designed the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. He has also conducted research in historical sociology, including Relations into Rhetorics: Local Elite Social Structure in Norfolk, England, 1540-1640 (Rutgers, 1993). He is the author of Doormen (University of Chicago Press, 2005). He is an editor of the Handbook of Analytical Sociology (Oxford University Press, 2009) and edits (with Peter Hedstrom) a series on analytical sociology at the Princeton University Press (PASS). A recipient of the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award in 2007, Bearman is currently investigating the social determinants of the autism epidemic. In addition, he is working on the dynamics of lynching in the deep south, violence in Northern Ireland, the analysis of event and relational sequences, and qualitative research design. He is a member of the American Acadamy of Arts and Science (AAAS and the National Academy of Science (NAS). He teaches introductory sociology, qualitative research design, research design, social networks, and classical social theory.