Abstract

Polarization affects many forms of social organization. A key issue focuses on which affective relationships are prone to change and how their change relates to performance. In this study, we analyze a financial institutional over a two-year period that employed 66 day traders, focusing on links between changes in affective relations and trading performance. Traders’ affective relations were inferred from their IMs (>2 million messages) and trading performance was measured from profit and loss statements (>1 million trades). Here, we find that triads of relationships, the building blocks of larger social structures, have a propensity towards affective balance, but one unbalanced configuration resists change. Further, balance is positively related to performance. Traders with balanced networks have the “hot hand”, showing streaks of high performance. Research implications focus on how changes in polarization relate to performance and polarized states can depolarize.

Details

Title
Structural balance emerges and explains performance in risky decision-making
Author
Askarisichani, Omid 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Jacqueline Ng Lane 2 ; Bullo, Francesco 3   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Friedkin, Noah E 4   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Singh, Ambuj K 1 ; Uzzi, Brian 5 

1  Department of Computer Science, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA 
2  Harvard Business School, Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA 
3  Center for Control, Dynamical Systems and Computation, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA; Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA 
4  Center for Control, Dynamical Systems and Computation, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA; Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA 
5  Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA; Management and Organizations Department, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA 
Pages
1-10
Publication year
2019
Publication date
Jun 2019
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20411723
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-10548-8
ProQuest document ID
2240138909
Copyright
© 2019. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.