Opinion polarization in the Receipt–Accept–Sample model

The Zaller theory of opinion formation is reformulated with one free parameter μ, 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: (i) the political awareness, measured by the number of received messages, increases with time first exponentially, later linearly; (ii) for small μ correlations are present between previously and newly received messages; (iii) these correlation lead to a hyperdiffusion effect in the space of attitudes of messages. Citizens with small μ are more prone to extremal opinions.