James H. Fowler
| James H. Fowler | |
|---|---|
James Fowler at Poptech, October 24, 2009.
Source: Kris Krüg, flickr. |
|
| Born | February 18, 1970 |
| Residence | United States |
| Citizenship | American |
| Fields |
Social network analysis Cooperation Political participation Genopolitics |
| Institutions |
University of California, San Diego University of California, Davis |
| Alma mater |
Harvard University (1992, 2001, 2003) Yale University (1997) |
| Known for |
Obesity contagiousness Happiness contagiousness Genopolitics Genes and Social Networks Colbert bump |
James H. Fowler (born February 18, 1970) is an American social scientist specializing in social networks, cooperation, political participation, and genopolitics (the study of the genetic basis of political behavior). He is currently Professor of Medical Genetics in the School of Medicine and Professor of Political Science in the Division of Social Science at the University of California, San Diego. He was named a 2010 Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.
Fowler earned a bachelor's degree from Harvard College in 1992, a master's degree in International Relations from Yale University in 1997, and a Ph.D. in Government from the Harvard University in 2003. He was also a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador from 1992 to 1994. In 2010, he was named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers.
Fowler's research centers on social networks. He is best known for his studies of the social spread of obesity,smoking, and happiness in the Framingham Heart Study, but he has also studied the network of legislative cosponsorships in the U.S. Congress and the network of U.S. Supreme Court precedents.
Studies by Nicholas A. Christakis and Fowler suggested a variety of individuals' attributes like obesity, smoking cessation, and happiness rather than being individualistic, are causally correlated by contagion mechanisms that transmit these behaviors over long distances within social networks. A debate over the statistical models used to establish these three degrees of influence findings ensued, but subsequent studies have found evidence of their central claims about behavioral influence and contagion.
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