Can Biases in Perceived Attitudes Explain Anti-Conformism?
Résumé
In two studies about farming practices, the respondents who are particularly favorable to organic farming tend to have a higher intention to convert their farm to organic when they perceive other farmers as not very favorable to this practice. This intention can be considered as anticonformist, as it is in opposition to the general view of others. This article hypothesizes that this phenomenon can be explained by some biases on the perceptions of attitudes. It proposes an agent-based model which computes an intention based on the theory of reasoned action (TRA) and assumes some biases in the perception of others' attitudes according to the social judgment theory. It investigates the conditions on the model parameter values for which the simulations reproduce the features observed in the studies. The results show that perceptual biases are a possible explanation of anticonformist intentions.