Patterns of Sociometric Choices: Transitivity Reconsidered

Social psychologists have consistently found that people choose friends offriends as their own friends more often than would be expected in random networks. However, most attempts to explain these findings have been based upon cognitive balance theory, and have paid little attention to other causes of clusters andlor individual variations in numbers of relations. This paper specifically shows how inequality of popularity among individuals implies disproportionate frequencies of particular types of triads, including transitive triad types. Counts of triad types provide evidence that inequality of popularity has predictable consequences for triad frequencies in many situations. Understanding causes of inequality and transitivity requires the study of the organization of clusters and popularity within a social context.