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Individual versus Social Benefit on the Heterogeneous Networks

The focus of structural balance theory is dedicated to social benefits, while in a real network individual benefits sometimes get the importance as well. In Strauss's model, the local minima are modeled by considering an individual term besides a social one and the assumption is based on equal strength of individual benefits. The results show that the competition between two terms leads to a phase transition between individual and social benefits and there is a critical point, $CP$, that represents a first-order phase transition in the network. Concerning a real network of relations, individuals adjust the strength of their relationships based on the benefits they acquire from. Therefore, addressing heterogeneity in the individual interactions, we study a modified version of Strauss's model in which the first term represents the heterogeneous individual benefit by $θ_{ij}$, and the coefficient of the second term, $α$, measures the strength of social benefit. Our studies show that there is a region where the triangles are in a crumpled state rather than being dispersed in the network and increasing the heterogeneity of individual benefits results in the narrower region of crumpled state. Out of this region, the network is a mixture of links and triangles and the value of $α$ determines whether the individual benefit or social benefit overcomes. For the small value of $α$ the individual benefit dominates whereas in the large value of $α$ the social benefit overcomes.