Events

• Dr. Alexander Isakov
  Postdoctoral Fellow
  Yale Institute for Network Science
  Yale University

Negative (antagonistic, or enemy) connections have been of longstanding theoretical importance for social structure. In a population of almost 25,000 adults interacting face-to-face in isolated villages, we measured over 100,000 positive and 15,000 negative ties. Here, we show that negative ties exhibit many of the same structural characteristics as positive ties, including a skewed degree distribution, reciprocity, and degree assortativity. We then exploit this large sample to develop and enumerate a complete taxonomy of all possible triads consisting of the expanded relationship set. Consistent with balance theory, enemies of friends and friends of enemies tend to be enemies; but, in an important empirical refutation of classical balance theory, we find that “the enemy of my enemy is more likely to be my enemy”. We also explore higher-order (community-level) results. Thus, negative ties, though uncommon relative to positive ties, play an important role in social structure.