Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
acceptedVersion
Publication Date
5-2024
Abstract
Structural balance theory is an established framework for studying social relationships of friendship and enmity. These relationships are modeled by a signed network whose energy potential measures the level of imbalance, while stochastic dynamics drives the network toward a state of minimum energy that captures social balance. It is known that this energy landscape has local minima that can trap socially aware dynamics, preventing it from reaching balance. Here we first study the robustness and attractor properties of these local minima. We show that a stochastic process can reach them from an abundance of initial states and that some local minima cannot be escaped by mild perturbations of the network. Motivated by these anomalies, we introduce best-edge dynamics (BED), a new plausible stochastic process. We prove that BED always reaches balance and that it does so fast in various interesting settings.
Discipline
OS and Networks
Research Areas
Intelligent Systems and Optimization
Areas of Excellence
Digital transformation
Publication
Physical Review E
Volume
106
Issue
3
First Page
1
Last Page
13
ISSN
2470-0045
Identifier
10.1103/physreve.106.034321
Publisher
American Physical Society
Citation
CHATTERJEE, Krishnendu; SVOBODA, Jakub; ZIKELIC, Dorde; PAVLOGIANNIS, Andreas; and TKADLEC, Josef.
Social balance on networks: Local minima and best-edge dynamics. (2024). Physical Review E. 106, (3), 1-13.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/9075
Copyright Owner and License
Authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1103/physreve.106.034321