title: Competing opinions and stubborness: Connecting models to data.
abstract: We introduce a general contagionlike model for competing opinions that includes dynamic resistance to alternative opinions. We show that this model can describe candidate vote distributions, spatial vote correlations, and a slow approach to opinion consensus with sensible parameter values. These empirical properties of large group dynamics, previously understood using distinct models, may be different aspects of human behavior that can be captured by a more unified model, such as the one introduced in this paper.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA.
authors.forename: Keith
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Burghardt
authors.affiliation: Center for Complexity in Business, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20740, USA.|Department of Marketing, Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20740, USA.
authors.forename: William
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Rand
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA.|Institute for Physical Science and Technology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA.|Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501, USA.
authors.forename: Michelle
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Girvan