Human beings are social animals, unlike near relatives such as the orang‐utang. For virtually all human beings (pace Robinson Crusoe) the most important part of their environment is their social environment. Communication between humans is primarily verbal, though various forms of non‐ verbal communication play an underestimated part. Words are amazingly useful tools for expressing concepts, but are less obviously suited for expressing mood and emotion. There are considerable differences between different individuals’ ability to understand and communicate emotions (with women almost always being better at it than men), which have considerable social effect. Evidence suggests that the better humans are at communicating emotions the less likely they are to commit violent acts, for example. The study of the communication of emotion is therefore a vital part of social psychology.
This book is not a general textbook or easy introduction to this complex subject. It is a handbook ‐ a collection of 20 commissioned chapters analysing and reviewing the scientific research on various aspects of this field. Inevitably there are omissions. It is rather weak on communication disorders, and on emotional disorders. I have not found anything on autism here, for example, nor anything to answer a recent inquiry I have received about sufferers from Asperger’s Syndrome using the Internet as a substitute for more direct social interaction ‐ in fact, nothing about the Internet at all, which is a fairly major new development in human communication. However, the book is to be recommended. Public libraries may consider it, but will probably find that £86 is rather a lot for a single textbook, and that it is rather too advanced for general reading. There are a large number of popular texts in this field that would be more suitable at a basic level. Libraries catering for academic research in psychology or social psychology should seriously think about buying it, and academic libraries in related areas such as criminology or media studies may find it worth considering.
