Social psychologists focus on the microlevel features that define interaction, often attending to dyads and triads. We argue that there also is utility in studying how configurations of four actors, or tetrads, pattern our social world. The current project considers the prevalence of directed tetrads across twenty social networks representing five relationship types (friendship, legislative co-sponsorship, Twitter, advice seeking, and email). By comparing these observed networks to randomly generated conditional networks, we identify tetrads that occur more frequently than expected, or network motifs. In all twenty networks, we find evidence for six tetrad motifs that collectively highlight tendencies toward hierarchy, clustering, and bridging in social interaction. Variations across network genres also emerge, suggesting that unique tetrad structural signatures could define different types of interaction.

社会心理学家关注定义互动的微观特征，通常关注二元和三元。我们认为，研究四个演员或四分体的配置如何塑造我们的社会世界也很有用。目前的项目考虑了代表五种关系类型（友谊、立法共同赞助、Twitter、寻求建议和电子邮件）的 20 个社交网络中定向四分体的普遍性。通过将这些观察到的网络与随机生成的条件网络进行比较，我们识别出比预期更频繁发生的四分体或网络基序。在所有 20 个网络中，我们发现了六个四分体基序的证据，这些基序共同突出了社会互动中的等级、集群和桥接趋势。网络类型的变化也出现了，