Multiplex mapping of social roles in isolated Honduran village networks

Human social networks involve multiple kinds of relationships—such as friendship, health support, and economic exchange—that serve different functions and compete for limited time and resources. Here, we deploy a compositional framework to infer functional roles in directed multiplex networks. We distinguish outgoing ties that reflect social behavior of individuals’ allocation of social effort from incoming ties that capture structural dependence, or social appeal. The method accounts for heterogeneity in individual activity levels and layer density across relational domains. Applying this approach to multiplex sociocentric network data from 23,378 individuals across 176 rural Honduran villages, we uncover well-defined role structures spanning friendship, health-related support, and economic interactions. We find a pronounced asymmetry: behavioral (outgoing) roles exhibit weaker demographic association but stronger geographic organization than incoming roles. This is consistent with shared local environments at the village-wide level shaping social action. In contrast, structural (incoming) roles show more pronounced life-course transitions and socioeconomic differentiation, with little geographic association. Taken together, these patterns reveal a systematic difference in how social behavior and social appeal are organized in multiplex social systems. This approach illustrates a general framework for studying social roles, inequality, and life-course dynamics in complex social systems.