Social Balance in the Triangle-Growing Networks

Wei Liu,Qing-Kuan Meng

doi:10.4236/sn.2013.23014

Abstract

In this article, we construct a triangle-growing network with tunable clusters and study the social balance dynamics in this network. The built network, which could reflect more features of real communities, has more triangle relations than the ordinary random-growing network. Then we apply the local triad social dynamics to the built network. The effects of the different cluster coefficients and the initial states to the final stationary states are discussed. Some new features of the sparse networks are found as well.

Highlights

Since balance theory was first proposed by Heider [1], lots of researchers have been interested in this field and many important contributions were made [2,3,4,5]
The degree distribution and cluster coefficient are discussed, and we find the network constructed in the paper is suitable for the issue of the dynamics of the social balance
The dynamics depends on the relations of three persons, so we construct a triangle-growing network, which has large cluster coefficient and lots of triangles

Summary

Introduction

Since balance theory was first proposed by Heider [1], lots of researchers have been interested in this field and many important contributions were made [2,3,4,5]. Antal et al [6] studied the balance dynamics on the social networks based on the notion of the balance theory. In their network, each node is connected to all the others, representing each person knows all the others in the society. Antal et al [6] studied the local triad dynamics on the complete network and found the dynamical phase transition in this system Apart from this dynamics, they considered the constrained triad dynamics in which the number of imbalanced triads cannot increase in an update event, and the final state can either be balanced or jammed. The dynamics is studied, and some interesting results are found

The Triangle-Growing Networks

Social Balance in Triangle-Growing Networks

Conclusion