Abstract for: Long-Term Opinion Dynamics and Social Change

Throughout history, public opinion has shifted across a wide range of topics, including views on gender roles, same-sex marriage, and abortion. The pace and extent of these changes, however, vary significantly from issue to issue. This project presents an agent-based model of long-term opinion dynamics, to understand factors that drive shifts in public opinion and behaviors. This model takes a coarse-grained perspective, to demonstrate that it is possible for these many modes of behavior to exist. This model conceptualizes long-term opinion change as the result of interactions among three key elements: opinions, behavior, and the norms or rules. Using generational cohort as a unit of analysis, it demonstrates opinion change both within and between generations. The model demonstrates that there are conditions under which progress can be made for issues, but also shows that oscillatory opinions can hinder progress. These two modes of behavior are reflected in the data from the General Social Survey and American National Elections Study. While the model generally demonstrates the two modes of behavior, it does not explain why the dynamics of particular issues behave as one or the other. This model also does not take into account particular exogenous shocks, which may be necessary to capture more historically accurate social and cultural contexts. editing and help with code