# 14.1: Defining automorphic equivalence


Automorphic equivalence is not as demanding a definition of similarity as structural equivalence, but is more demanding than regular equivalence. There is a hierarchy of the three equivalence concepts: any set of structural equivalences are also automorphic and regular equivalences. Any set of automorphic equivalences are also regular equivalences. Not all regular equivalences are necessarily automorphic or structural; and not all automorphic equivalences are necessarily structural.

Formally "Two vertices u and v of a labeled graph G are automorphically equivalent if all the vertices can be re-labeled to form an isomorphic graph with the labels of u and v interchanged. Two automorphically equivalent vertices share exactly the same label-independent properties." (Borgatti, Everett, and Freeman, 1996: 119).

More intuitively, actors are automorphically equivalent if we can permute the graph in such a way that exchanging the two actors has no effect on the distances among all actors in the graph. If we want to assess whether two actors are automorphically equivalent, we first imagine exchanging their positions in the network. Then, we look and see if, by changing some other actors as well, we can create a graph in which all of the actors are the same distance that they were from one another in the original graph.

In the case of structural equivalence, two actors are equivalent if we can exchange them one-for-one, and not affect any properties of the graph. Automorphically equivalent actors are actors that can be exchanged with no effect on the graph -- given that other actors are also moved. If the concept is still a bit difficult to grasp at this point, don't worry. Read on, and then come back after you've looked at a few examples.

This page titled 14.1: Defining automorphic equivalence is shared under a not declared license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Robert Hanneman & Mark Riddle.