  Spatially-situated opinions that can be held with different degrees of
conviction lead to spatio-temporal patterns such as clustering (homophily),
polarization, and deadlock. Our goal is to understand how sensitive these
patterns are to changes in the local nature of interactions. We introduce two
different mixing mechanisms, spatial relocation and non-local interaction
("telephoning"), to an earlier fully spatial model (no mixing). Interestingly,
the mechanisms that create deadlock in the fully spatial model have the
opposite effect when there is a sufficient amount of mixing. With telephoning,
not only is polarization and deadlock broken up, but consensus is hastened. The
effects of mixing by relocation are even more pronounced. Further insight into
these dynamics is obtained for selected parameter regimes via comparison to the
mean-field differential equations.
