Compare methods

	Structural Balance Theory	Blockmodeling
Field	Sociology	Sociology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1946 (Heider); 1956 (Cartwright & Harary)	1976
Originator	Fritz Heider; formalized by Dorwin Cartwright & Frank Harary	Harrison White, Scott Boorman & Ronald Breiger
Type	Theory and graph-theoretic test for tension in signed relationships	Network partitioning into positions and a reduced role structure
Seminal source	Cartwright, D., & Harary, F. (1956). Structural balance: a generalization of Heider's theory. Psychological Review, 63(5), 277–293.	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.
Aliases	balance theory, Heider balance, signed network balance, structural balance analysis	block modeling, blockmodel analysis, generalized blockmodeling, CONCOR
Related	5	4
Summary	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'.	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.