Compare methods

	Blockmodeling	Structural Balance Theory
Field	Sociology	Sociology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1976	1946 (Heider); 1956 (Cartwright & Harary)
Originator	Harrison White, Scott Boorman & Ronald Breiger	Fritz Heider; formalized by Dorwin Cartwright & Frank Harary
Type	Network partitioning into positions and a reduced role structure	Theory and graph-theoretic test for tension in signed relationships
Seminal source	White, H. C., Boorman, S. A., & Breiger, R. L. (1976). Social structure from multiple networks. I. Blockmodels of roles and positions. American Journal of Sociology, 81(4), 730–780.	Cartwright, D., & Harary, F. (1956). Structural balance: a generalization of Heider's theory. Psychological Review, 63(5), 277–293.
Aliases	block modeling, blockmodel analysis, generalized blockmodeling, CONCOR	balance theory, Heider balance, signed network balance, structural balance analysis
Related	4	5
Summary	Blockmodeling is a family of methods that simplify a social network by partitioning its actors into positions — groups of actors who are equivalent in their pattern of ties — and summarizing the relations between positions as a compact image, or reduced role structure. Introduced by Harrison White, Scott Boorman, and Ronald Breiger in 1976, it shifts attention from individuals to the structural roles they occupy.	Structural balance theory analyzes networks whose ties carry a sign — positive for liking, alliance, or trust, negative for hostility or distrust — and asks which configurations are psychologically and socially stable. Originating in Fritz Heider's cognitive balance principle and given a graph-theoretic form by Dorwin Cartwright and Frank Harary in 1956, it predicts that signed networks evolve toward states free of the tension produced by inconsistent triads such as 'the friend of my enemy'.