Can biases in perceived attitudes explain anti-conformism?

Summary

This paper investigates how anti-conformist intentions could be related to some biases on the perception of attitudes. It starts from two case studies, related to the adoption of organic farming, that show anti-conformist intentions. It proposes an agent-based model which computes an intention based on the Theory of Reasoned Action and assumes some biases in the perception of others' attitudes according to the Social Judgement Theory. It investigates the conditions on the model parameter values for which the simulations reproduce the features observed in the case studies. The results suggest that anti-conformist intentions are indeed likely to be the effect of perception biases.