English

Opinion polarization in the Receipt-Accept-Sample model

Physics and Society 2009-11-13 v2

Abstract

The Zaller theory of opinion formation is reformulated with one free parameter μ\mu, which measures the largest possible ideological distance which can be made by a citizen in one mental step. Our numerical results show the transient effects: {\it i)} the political awareness, measured by the number of received messages, increases with time first exponentially, later linearly; {\it ii)} for small μ\mu correlations are present between previously and newly received messages; {\it iii)} these correlation lead to a hyperdiffusion effect in the space of attitudes of messages. Citizens with small μ\mu are more prone to extremal opinions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0806.1204,
  title  = {Opinion polarization in the Receipt-Accept-Sample model},
  author = {Krzysztof Kulakowski},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0806.1204},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

13 pages, 6 figures; text improved, thanks to Referees

R2 v1 2026-06-21T10:48:17.109Z