Positive contagion and the macrostructures of generalized balance

Abstract

Balance theory has advanced with interdisciplinary contributions from social science, physical science, engineering, and mathematics. The common focus of attention is social networks in which every individual has either a positive or negative, cognitive or emotional, appraisal of every other individual. The current frontier of work on balance theory is a hunt for a dynamical model that predicts the temporal evolution of any such appraisal network to a particular structure in the complete set of balanced networks allowed by the theory. Finding such a model has proved to be a difficult problem. In this article, we contribute a parsimonious solution of the problem that explicates the conditions under which a network will evolve either to a set of mutually antagonistic cliques or to an asymmetric structure that allows agreement, cooperation, and compromise among cliques.