ABSTRACT
R. H. Willis’s model is based on his symbolic scheme for representing possible responses to social influence. Willis’s model has several strengths. It identifies three widely recognized responses in a single model: conformity, independence, and anticonformity. The synthetic model, like the Willis and V. L. Allen models on which it was based, has some clear strengths. It directly includes all the responses identified by Allen. The reader will recall that disinhibitory contagion begins with the potential influencee in an approach–avoidance conflict, desiring to engage in a certain behavior but being inhibited by social forces from doing so. The degree of preinfluence public and private agreement with the eventual influence source sets the context in which various social responses can occur, hence the name “Social Response Context Model.”
