Fig. 5: Effect of information about triangle relationships on the normalized balance (\({\hat{f}}\)) achieved by groups of participants receiving no information (red), irrelevant information (yellow), or relevant information about one of their triangles (blue).

Shaded areas represent the 95% confidence intervals. The initial balance (on average acros s groups, \({f}_{1}=0.27\)) is set to \({\hat{f}}_{1}=0\) for easier comparison of tasks and experimental conditions. Note that balance forms very rapidly, reaching \({f}_{4}=0.62\) (\({\hat{f}}_{4}=0.35\) after normalization) in only three study waves. The achieved level of balance corresponds better to the predictions of the dyadic model than of the triadic model (Fig. 3).