Putting together any Handbook is daunting. The challenge of creating an edited volume is enhanced further when the research area is interdisciplinary, as is the study of nonverbal cues. We decided that the focus should be on communication and not the entire spectrum of research concerned with nonverbal behavior. Over the years, scholars have argued over where to draw the line between communicative and noncommunicative events. In some cases, this led to a very restricted view of communication, including only those behaviors that were sent intentionally and had a consistent meaning, at least within a particular culture. Our preference is to assume a broader definition of nonverbal communication, encompassing the sending and receiving of information through appearance, objects, the environment, and behavior in social settings.

Choosing topics and authors to represent the breadth of the field and, at the same time, provide a discriminating analysis of research and theory, presented another challenge. There was a large range of expertise and issues that merited consideration. Although not fully inclusive, we were fortunate in enlisting scholars who have devoted much of [Page xii]their academic life to understanding better the processes involved in the give-and-take of nonverbal communication. This helped us in our goal for the Handbook to provide a path to understanding the subtleties of our social interactions and our relationships with one another. The chapters in the Handbook emphasize the primacy of nonverbal channels in facilitating interpersonal contact and regulating our social worlds.

Unlike other Handbooks, the current volume's chapters are not meant to be exhaustive of the research in the area. Rather, authors were given the charge of making an argument for what is important in their respective areas. Thus, for example, Fridlund and Russell call for a move away from thinking about emotions as the primary function of facial displays. Robinson, in his chapter on physician-patient nonverbal interaction argues for the importance of a situated, focused microanalytic assessment of the cues that occur in such interactions. Walther argues that computer-mediated communication is not devoid of nonverbal cues as is often asserted but, rather, that chronemics have always been a source of message value for people communicating online. As readers work through this Handbook, they will see a range of expertise and perspective that reflects the amazing sophistication of current scholarship on nonverbal communication.

To organize the large and diverse set of arguments about nonverbal communication, we placed the chapters into four primary categories. This first section, “foundations,” provides an array of issues that underlie all conceptualizations of and research into nonverbal communication. Specifically, chapters include the broad history of nonverbal communication (Knapp), parallel processes in nonverbal communication (Patterson), methods (Gray & Ambady), cognitive bases (Lakin), skills (Riggio), and coordination with language (Bavelas & Chovil). These issues are essential for understanding how nonverbal communication works and how it has been studied. Our second section, “factors of influence,” brings together work on the myriad forces that help shape our use of nonverbal communication. This section emphasizes the importance of biology (Buck & Renfro Powers), evolution (Floyd), personality (Gifford), age (Feldman & Tyler), sex and gender (Hall), culture (Matsumoto), and the media (Manusov & Jaworski). Each of these chapters argues for the ways in which the particular factors work to shape the practice and meaning of nonverbal communication.

The third section of the handbook, “functions,” follows the premise that nonverbal communication serves a variety of different purposes. That is, nonverbal communication facilitates short-term and long-term ends in our social world. These functions include sending relational messages of intimacy (Andersen, Guerrero, & Jones) and dominance (Burgoon & Dunbar), expressing intentions and, to a lesser degree, emotions (Fridlund & Russell), creating and managing impressions (Keating), deceiving others or helping us detect deception (Vrij), regulating interaction (Cappella & Schreiber), and building and reflecting rapport (Tickle-Degnen). These chapters discuss the complexity of these communicative functions and suggest the importance of nonverbal cues for the communication of fundamental human endeavors.

An awareness of the importance of nonverbal cues is reflected again in our fourth section, “contexts and consequences.” In this set of chapters, the authors work to reveal the ways in which particular contexts shape and make salient certain nonverbal processes. They also discuss the very real implications of nonverbal behavior within these contexts. The contexts we have focused on for this Handbook are close relationships (Noller), education (McCroskey, Richmond, & McCroskey), physician-patient [Page xiii]interaction (Robinson), computer-mediated communication (Walther), groups (Dovidio, Hebl, Richeson, & Shelton), and organizations (Remland). The implications and importance of nonverbal cues are also made clear in Giles and Le Poire's engaging Introduction.

Although we have worked to organize this Handbook into a larger frame, two caveats are important to note. First, reading across chapters shows a range of places where debate exists in the research community about the best ways to conceptualize and measure certain nonverbal phenomena. In our final chapter, Patterson and Manusov work to make these debates—about the role of learning and inheritance, about the nature and “privilege” of certain processes such as emotional expression over others—even more apparent. Second, readers will see that the chapters cross-reference one another, showing—sometimes despite areas of difference—the important connection between many of the lines of research highlighted in this volume. They also reflect just how far research on nonverbal cues and processes has come.

Ours is an interdisciplinary field, creating opportunities to see the myriad factors involved in nonverbal communication and sometimes adding blinders to what we choose to investigate. It is our hope that the current Handbook encourages the former and discourages the latter, working to develop a full and integrated set of future nonverbal scholarship.