Provided by Cognitive Sciences ePrint Archive
Social Balance Theory
Revisiting Heider’s Balance Theory for many agents
Deni Khanafiah1 , Hokky Situngkir2
1 Research Assistant in Bandung Fe Institute, mail: [email protected]
2 Dept. Computational Sociology, Bandung Fe Institute, mail:
[email protected], web: http://www.geocities.com/quicchote
Abstract
We construct a model based on Heider’s social balance theory to analyze the
interpersonal network among social agents. The model of social balance theory provides
us an interesting tool to see how a social group evolves to the possible balance state. We
introduce the balance index that can be used to measure social balance in macro
structure level (global balance index) or in micro structure (local balance index) to see
how the local balance index influences the global balance structure. Several experiments
are done and we discover how the social group can form separation of subgroups in a
group or strengthening a social group while emphasizing the structure theorem and
social mitosis previously introduced.
Keyword: Heider’s Balance Theory, balance index, structure theorem, sentiment
relation, social balance, balance configurations
my friend’s friend is my friend
my friend’s enemy is my enemy
my enemy’s friend is my enemy
my enemy’s enemy is my friend
Heider’s Balance Theory (1958)
1. Introduction
Relations among individuals characterize interactions occur in a social system.
One important component among social agents in the relation is sentiment - sentiments
can result a social mitosis defined as the emergence of two groups, disliking exists
between the two subgroups within liking agents (Wang and Thorngate, 2003). The
overall sentiments among agents show the balance of a social system. Social
psychologist, Fritz Heider (1946), shows the balance on the relationship between three
things: the perceiver, another person, and an object (Keisler, 1969:157); while the third
can also be a person.
Commonly, sentiment relations can be categorized into two: positive or like and
negative or dislike. The concept proposed by Heider’s Balance Theory discusses the
relations among individuals based on sentiment. Balance state over two people (dyad)
will occur if the two like each other or dislike each other, meanwhile, if one has a