1. Nonverbal communication as an interface between social science and biology
 
One of the basic aims of this book is to try to convince the reader of the utter artificiality of the supposed opposition between culture and biology. This opposition has a long tradition in academia, and it is perhaps no surprise that some recent controversies such as the sociobiology debate have been conducted within the standard framework of "nature" vs. "nurture." However, such a contrast is not only artificial but also represents a biologically quite outdated way of thinking. At least since the Modern Synthesis during the first half of this century, the paradigm of gene-environment interactionism has prevailed within biology - if this had been adopted also by social scientists, their obvious conclusion would long since have been that it is not a question of nature vs. nurture, but of both at the same time. Unfortunately, the prevailing division of labor in academia and a lingering "biophobia" in the social sciences have made a rapprochement difficult for those who study human behavior from a biological and a social scientific perspective. However, we believe that the field of nonverbal communication is a strategical site for demonstrating the inextricable interrelationship between nature and culture in human behavior. We hope that the papers presented in this volume will persuade social scientists that much of the new research now going on in the life sciences could be of direct relevance to their own most fundamental theoretical quests.
 
Nonverbal communication is a field which encompasses a wide variety of disciplines within both the social and natural sciences. If there ever was a field that could be labelled "the missing link" between the social and natural sciences, this would be it. Nonverbal communication is not only naturally multidisciplinary, it also approaches the multi-faceted connections between biology and culture from a broad spectrum of intellectual angles. In fact, the typically interdisciplinary interests of students of nonverbal communication makes it sometimes hard to classify these researchers as belonging to either natural or social science. This is particularly true since epistemological and methodological views in this field freely cross the supposed divide between the two cultures. At present, relevant research goes on in a range of academic disciplines, all the way from neurophysiology, psychophysiology, behavioral ecology and ethology to social psychology, psychiatry, anthropology, sociology and linguistics.
 
Despite an overlap of interests and methodological approaches, students of nonverbal phenomena in different disciplines may not always be aware of one another's research. The academic organization of fields and specialties encourages relatively narrow specialization, and publications are typically directed to an expert audience. Based on our conviction that nonverbal communication might serve as a model for the much-needed rapprochement between the natural and social sciences, we requested the assistance of the Zentrum fur Interdisziplinare Forschung (ZIF) to provide an opportunity for us to organize a conference on this topic as part of the group project "Biological Foundations of Human Culture." With the support of ZIF, we were able to invite forefront students of nonverbal communication from a wide variety of fields to share their recent recearch with each other and our group in non-technical language. This book is an edited version of the papers presented at the conference "Nonverbal Communication and the Genesis of Culture," arranged at ZIF in March 1992. We hope that this book will convey some of the interdisciplinary spirit and many individual "aha!" experiences of that conference.
 
The opposition to biology in the social sciences has a long tradition. For some, it may even seem that resisting biological explanations of human behavior ought to be the epistemological raison d'etre for a social scientist. But such a view represents a relatively recent paradigm in the social sciences. It should be pointed out that ever since their beginning, the social sciences have had an off-again on-again relationship with biology. Thus, there have existed periods when social scientists have felt quite free to seek explanations for human behavior in biological factors. For instance, at the beginning of this century evolutionary biology was taken as a basis for many social scientific theories. Interestingly, at that time biological arguments were used for both conservative and progressive social policy programs. However, the social sciences' involvement with biology later followed a (mistaken) view of human genetics as Mendelian, which got them implicated in contemporary racial theorizing and eugenics.
 
After the Second World War, the tide turned again. Several factors contributed to a decline of the biological paradigm and a shift to environmentalism in the social sciences: the realization that earlier assumptions about the inheritance of human traits could not be biologically supported any longer, the revulsion to Nazi doctrine, and the emerging cultural relativist paradigm promoted by Franz Boas and his students. And ever since the Second World War, particularly after the famous UNESCO statement on race in 1952, the environmentalist paradigm has prevailed. This means that for the last four decades, biology has been not only black-boxed but black-listed. However, we believe that it is now high time that social scientists for intellectual reasons took a new look at the biological sciences and the potential insights they may provide for social scientific theorizing.
 
It seems clear, however, that an initiative to a reconciliation between biology and the social sciences would have to come from the latter. A good example of how not to try to integrate biology and the social sciences was probably Edward Wilson's (1975) suggestion to 'biologize' the social sciences, judging from the strong reaction his Sociobiology provoked (e.g., Wiegele, 1981; Sahlins, 1976; Leach, 1981). Indeed, overselling biology to the social sciences may trigger all kinds of epistemological and political resistance, particularly since any consideration of biological factors tends to be immediately labelled "reductionism" or "biological determinism" (Segerstrale, 1992).
 
 
However, an additional reason for social scientists' lack of sympathy for sociobiology may well have been the different time scales involved in social scientific and evolutionary biological theorizing. Sociobiological reasoning deals with long-range evolutionary scenarios and adaptive explanations for particular behaviors. Such a way of thinking is quite alien to social scientists who deal with contemporary or at most historical behaviors. Therefore, among biological fields, the closest field to the social sciences is probably ethology. Interestingly, this discipline has not been overtly recognized as relevant to the social sciences (even though ethological notions have been smuggled in through the back door in the footnotes of sociologists such as Erwin Goffman; see also Collins, 1975).
 
It should be noted, however, that not all types of biological arguments have have been rejected by social scientists. At least three biological givens seem to have been largely incorporated as part of the social scientific body of knowledge: the "hard-wiredness" of the human capacity for language, the existence of "critical periods" in language development, and the importance of social interaction for normal human development. This at least opens up the possibility that social scientists might also be interested in further studies concerning the biological basis of human communcative abilities, including the results of today's sophisticated psychophysiological and neurophysiological research. Indeed, what emerges today is an increasingly complex picture of human communicative ability as simultaneously biologically and socioculturally influenced, with a few capacities apparently more biologically "hard-wired" than others (and therefore probably crucial as communicational building-blocks): face recognition, imitation, emotional communication, and the capacity for language. This will be dealt with in more detail below.
 
 
2. Overcoming the false dichotomy between nature and nurture.
 
Nonverbal communication has not been sufficiently appreciated in the social sciences so far. The main reason is probably that the social sciences have tended to strongly emphasize the unique human capacity for language, i.e. symbolic communication. However, considering that nonverbal communication is obviously an important everyday phenomenon - there have been estimates that up to 2/3 of our behavior in dyadic interaction is nonverbal (Birdwistell in Knapp 1978: 30) - it is high time for the important insights from this field to get integrated in the social scientific domain. It is safe to say that much of our de facto understanding of one another - and of total strangers - is rooted in our nonverbal abilities and their relationships to our shared human neurology and physiology. This everyday experience seems to have been played down in much abstract social science discourse. In sociology, the most notable exception is the symbolic interactionist school, represented by George Herbert Mead, who introduced the notion of a "conversation of gestures" to explain the origin of the social Self (Mead 1934). Later on, the role of nonverbal communication has been recognized particularly within the traditions of micro-sociology (Goffman 1959, 1972; Scheff 1990; Collins 1977, 1981) and ethnomethodology (Garfinkel 1967), and occasionally in social theory (e.g., Giddens, 1984).
 
Another reason for the relative invisibility of nonverbal communication within the social sciences is the particular history of this type of research, originating in fields outside the mainstream.  One of the two main orientations of early nonverbal communication research, beginning in the mid-1950s, resulted from a collaboration between structural linguists, psychiatrists and anthropologists who were inspired by the new developments in information theory and cybernetics. The representatives of this 'structural' approach or "context analysis" were interested in the organization of behavior, patterns of interaction, and the like. Because it drew inspiration from anthropological linguistics in the Sapir-Whorf tradition (Sapir 1949; Whorf 1956), this strand of early nonverbal research saw itself as falling on the "culture" side of a hypothetical academic divide. For instance, Ray Birdwhistell, the founder of kinesics (the language of body movement) insisted on the total determination of nonverbal behavior by culture or language group (Birdwhistell, 1970). The same was true for Edward Hall, the founder of proxemics (the language of space), who extended the linguistic relativity thesis to cultural differences in conceptions of space and time (Hall 1959, 1966).
 
Meanwhile, research on the "nature" side in nonverbal communication concentrated on finding evidence of human behavioral ®¯universals®¯. Ultimately, this line of research derives from Darwin's (1872/1965) famous The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals (e.g., Ekman 1973). The evidence here came from several sources: primatological studies indicating homologies between primate and human facial expressions (Chevalier-Skolnikoff 1973; van Hooff 1972), human ethological research on facial expressions of blind, deaf, and later even thalidomide children (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1973, 1989), identification of cultural universals (Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1972, 1989), and cross-cultural research on facial expressions (Ekman 1973; Ekman and Friesen 1969, 1975, 1978; Ekman and Keltner this volume; Izard 1977; Zajonc 1980). Still another important type of research involves the psychophysiology of the human face (Dimberg, 1982; Ohman and Dimberg 1978).
 
Until recently, these two main strands of research saw themselves, and were also presented as, representing serious alternative viewpoints (cf. e.g., Knapp, 1978). In the 1990s it is no longer possible to postulate a simple either-or situation when it comes to culture and biology. Additional evidence has accumulated to tip the balance in favor of the biological foundations of nonverbal behavior, or, more correctly, toward an answer which inseparably involves both culture and biology (see also Reynolds, 1980; Hinde, 1987). The present volume is designed to make this point as explicitly as possible. Furthermore, today the dividing lines between nonverbal and language communication appear much less clearcut than before. The same is true for the disctinction between human and animal communication. Language experts are increasingly turning to pre-verbal communication for clues to the infant's linguistic development. Meanwhile, there is accumulating evidence of symbolic or proto-symbolic communication in animals, although the extent to which this is really the case still remains controversial (these topics are more extensively covered in Velichkovsky and Rumbaugh, 1995).
 
It is also important to argue for the complementarity between different types of research on behavior across the disciplinary divide. We have in mind Niko Tinbergen's famous "Four Questions" (Tinbergen 1963). Tinbergen argues that "why" questions concerning behavior can be equally legitimately asked at four different levels: the phylogenetic, ontogenetic, physiological and functional ones. (From such a perspective, e.g., evolutionary biologists cannot claim that theirs is the ultimate answer to the "why" of a particular behavior). Within the field of nonverbal communication, this means that we might talk about such things as the evolutionary preparedness for sending and receiving, the ontogenetic development of interpersonal communication skills in infancy, the physiological concomitants of various types of nonverbal interactions, and the social function of particular nonverbal messages. An alternative way to see the four questions would be to regard them as representing four different aspects of the same problem, requiring not four responses but only one complex interdiscipliplinary answer. This is also what we hope to demonstrate in this volume, where in every chapter the authors were encouraged to examine the interconnections between different fields of inquiry and between levels within their own specific field of research.
 
The book is divided in four sections. Section I is devoted to human universals, a long-standing issue of contention in the "nature-nurture" debate and obviously of central importance to nonverbal  communication. Section II deals with evolutionary aspects of behavior and Section III with developmental ones. Both sections emphasize the central importance of the social and cultural context. The final section IV of this book addresses the question of the relationship between nonverbal communication and culture and points to the various  benefits for social scientific theorizing that may come from paying more attention to recent insights from nonverbal research.
 
 
3. Human universals: from behavior manifestations to predispositions
 
It is now clear that some of the early conceptions of alternative cultural and biological explanations for nonverbal behavior were based on mistaken assumptions. Among other things, earlier researchers did not make the crucial distinction between voluntary and involuntary expression of emotion, nor consider the possibility that culture could "order" persons to mask their true emotions (Ekman and Keltner, this volume). In fact, the whole situation regarding human universals is now being reevaluated. Particularly, it seems that the original Sapir-Whorf thesis of linguistic relativism (i.e. that our language determines our categories of thought) is becoming increasingly untenable. (Interestingly, even one prominent anthropologist working within the linguistic anthropological tradition recently admitted this; Hall, 1977: 31). There is now mounting evidence for the de facto existence of universals in cases where earlier anthropologists proclaimed fundamental cultural differences.  Moreover, earlier anthropological studies have been criticized for  errors or exaggerations (see e.g., Brown, 1992; Cosmides, Tooby, Barkow 1992; Fox, 1989).
 
In this process of reevaluation, it is probably psychology rather than anthropology that provides the most significant new research. For instance, regarding the disputed existence of a universal color scheme, sophisticated methods now point to a pre-linguistic tendency to divide up the continuous color spectrum into discrete colors (e.g., Bornstein 1976 and 1995; Harnard, 1995; for overviews of anthropological and psychological findings see Brown 1992, Shepard 1992).
 
However, despite these new efforts to set the record straight, the whole discussion of universals may be on the wrong track. Since it was focused on particular behaviors, earlier anthropologists could always mobilize some culture that did not fit the human ethologists' claims about universals, and meanwhile criticize the latter for selective documentation. Now again it seems that it is the cultural anthropologists' turn to be scrutinized for errors. It is not clear that an easy reconciliation can be reached. In this situation, perhaps a useful alternative to looking for the manifestations of particular behavioral universals across cultures would be to concentrate instead on universal human predispositions for nonverbal communication. Thus, the new emphasis would now be on the elementary building blocks for interactional skills and the process of their development in infancy. Such a focus would allow for real observable cultural differences while still maintaining a pan-human foundation.
 
Current research in nonverbal communication and neurophysiology shows an increasingly complex picture of human communicative ability as both biologically and socioculturally influenced. However, it seems that there are a few capacities that are apparently more biologically "hard-wired" than others. Let us briefly look at them.
 
The most important clue to human communication may well be in the face. The face is surprisingly well-prepared for nonverbal communication. Already at birth, all of the important muscles that are needed for emotional expressions are well developed (Ekman, 1982).  There are studies of newborn infants, including infants born without or with damaged cortex, that show that they react to various stimuli (sweet, sour, bitter, taste, etc.) in a clearly identifiable way (Steiner, 1979). Research has also shown the great speed with which the all-important mother-infant bond is formed through newborns' preferential tracking of face-like stimuli (e.g., Johnson et al. 1991). (This bond can be described as the "machine" for the infant's emotional and linguistic development). Earlier studies have already shown mimicking to be a particularly important inborn response (Field et al. 1982; McDougall 1908; Meltzoff and Moore, 1977; Meltzoff 1985) (for instance, the heart rate connected with mimicking in neonates indicates that this is indeed a directly triggered response, not connected to any conscious activity, Molnar 1990). However, mimicking in turn gives rise to particular physiological responses in the infant and is thus related to its emotional development. Studies also continue demonstrating an innate fear reaction to negative faces in young infants, even to faces drawn as asymmetrical lines (Dimberg, this volume), with physiological responses similar to other well-known fear reactions (e.g., to snakes Ohman 1986; Sackett 1966).
 
Overall, we seem to have an inborn very rapid encoding and decoding capacity for facial emotional messages, i.e. we are naturally capable senders and receivers (Dimberg, this volume). Maybe the most intriguing piece of evidential support for the central role of the face in human communication is that an area of the brain appears to be specifically devoted to facial recognition (Geschwind 1979). "Face neurons" have been recently reported for facial recognition in monkeys (Perrett, Rolls, Caan 1982; Weiss, 1988; Yang and Yamane 1992) and also in sheep  (Kendrick and Baldwin 1987).
 
For those who are skeptical of the existence of universal emotions, new responses have now been provided by Ekman and his colleagues. The newest research on cross-cultural universals in facial expressions of emotions shows a connection of facial display also with physiology (as measured e.g., by galvanic skin response or heart rate) and with regional activity of the brain. It is now reported that the same physiological effect (or brain activity) is achieved also when research subjects are instructed to put together a facial expression muscle by muscle (Ekman and Keltner, this volume; Ekman, Levenson, Friesen 1983; Levenson, Ekman, Heider 1992). Meanwhile, in response to those who argue for a purely cultural or personal control of emotions, it has been shown that humans have after all a limited capacity of successfully masking their emotions. Humans are particularly good at distinguishing authentic from inauthentic smiles, since the external eye muscle involved in the so-called Duchenne smile typical of genuine happiness is not under voluntary control (Ekman, 1985; Ekman and Friesen, 1982; Ekman and Keltner, this volume). Some criticism of the research on universal emotions has suggested that it has focused too much on those basic emotions which can reliably be identified in the face (happiness, sadness, surprise, fear, anger, and disgust). There are now studies underway of universals which involve also body movement, particularly a tell-tale movement sequence indicating embarrassment (Ekman and Keltner, this volume).
 
Further evidence that the dispositions for interpersonal interaction in different nonverbal channels - face, voice, touch, etc. - are relatively hard-wired comes from research on grooming behavior (Suomi, this volume). Grooming is ubiquitous both in animals and humans - including German university students - but may recently have become "repressed" in Western culture (as manifested by the hairdresser and barber professions) (Schiefenhovel, this volume). To the list of universal ritualized gestures collected over the years by the Eibl-Eibesfeldt school of human ethology (e.g., the famous eyebrow flash, a greeting which also indicates surprise or fear), two new candidates has now been added: the "nose wrinkle" as a gesture for slight social distancing and the "disgust face" as a strong signal of social repulsion. The suggestion is that both these ritualized gestures involve muscle movements which originally had to do with bad smells or vomiting, respectively (Schiefenhovel, this volume). Schiefenhovel explains the human capacity for cross-cultural understanding as grounded in our common anatomical-emotional history, a result of the fact that, morphologically, nature tends to utilize already existing organs for necessary new functions.
 
 
4. The importance of the social context for the development of nonverbal skills
 
Ever since Harry Harlow's (1959) famous monkey experiments, in which infant monkeys preferred a terry-cloth "mother" to a milk-providing wire "mother", Rene Spitz'(1965) research on human infants and John Bowlby's (1969) studies of attachment and loss, the hard-wiredness of the mother-infant bond, i.e., our basic predisposition for affective sociality, has been clear (cf. Suomi, this volume). In fact, this is one of the tenets of social scientists. Further detailed studies of early mother-infant bonding show the role of nonverbal communication in the development of the infant's social skills, particularly through the infant's increasing realization of the social meaning of the smile (Schneider this volume). Here, a new research finding is the important guiding role of parents in turning the "biological" infant into a "cultural" being (Papousek and Papousek, this volume).
 
Developmental research on monkeys also shows the continued role of the parent as a trainer of the infant's social capabilities. A dramatic example of how a nurturing environment may overcome a genetic handicap is the case of infant monkeys possessing a "shyness gene." Under the care of a nurturing foster mother, genetically "shy" monkeys may in fact turn into superior social performers. There is also a clear link between stressful situations and elevated ACTH hormone levels for these genetically shy monkeys (Suomi, this volume).
 
In humans, this early bonding apparently helps prepare the way for the infant's later language development. Studies have shown that neonates not only "lock into" the gaze of their mothers, but also move rhythmically to the sounds of the mother's voice (Brazelton et al. 1974; Condon and Sander 1974; Papousek and Papousek, this volume; Trevarthen, 1977). It even seems that infants at a very early stage learn to distinguish the sounds of their mother tongue from the sounds of other languages (Kuhl et al. 1992). Indeed, preverbal communication is of increasing interest for students of language communication (see Velichkovsky and Rumbaugh, 1995).
 
 
5. The convergence of approaches in human and animal nonverbal communication studies
 
It has already earlier been forcefully argued that it is a mistake to believe that humans messages are typically cognitive and intentional while animal signals are typically expressive and involuntary (e.g., Marler 1984). Now ingenious naturalistic and laboratory experiments with tape-recorders and video cameras have further strenghtened the thesis that animal signals may in fact function as rudimentary symbolic communication systems. In vervet monkeys, the alarm calls corresponding to threats from eagles, leopards, and snakes are all context-sensitive (Cheyney and Seyfarth 1990; Marler and Evans, this volume). There is also an interesting parallel: in the same way that in children the meaning of words becomes more specified during the course of semantic development, vervet monkeys first show a generalized responsiveness to moving aerial stimuli, which is then sharpened by experience to correspond to one particular eagle species among many (Marler and Evans, this volume).
 
Furthermore, animal alarm calls are subject to an "audience effect" - they are not made if there is no obvious recipient (Marler and Evans, this volume). Working within a similar framework, Schneider looked at the audience effect in the smiles of young children. He found that in task-oriented situations children's smiles could take on different natures: they were either of an expressive or communicative kind, depending on whether or not someone was watching (Schneider, this volume).
 
Considering that human ethologists tend to draw parallels between nonverbal behavior in humans and primates, it is interesting to have primatologists warn that we cannot always assume homology between facial expressions when comparing primate and human facial displays (Preuschoft and van Hooff, this volume). Even though phylogenetically human smile and laughter can be seen as modifications of the primate "silent bared-teeth" and "relaxed open-mouth" displays (originally denoting a fear grin or a friendly play face, respectively), primates may use smiles and laughter instrumentally, e.g., as appeasement strategies. Moreover, the this varies with different primate species and societies (here "the power assymetry hypothesis" states that it is the social organization of the society that determines the particular forms these evolutionarily "emancipated" displays will take: despotic societies are dependent on a clear distinction between displays for submission and friendliness, while in egalitarian societies the distinction is blurred). In addition to social ecological explanations of this type, there appears to be an increasing interest in primate Machiavellianism, too, these days (Wilson, Near and Miller, 1993). Thus, it seems that also when it comes to intentional behavior, animals are brought closer to humans.
 
Finally, it is possible to regard both nonverbal and language communication as evolutionary adaptations to particular ecological conditions. An "informed speculation" goes as follows (Maryanski, this volume). Instead of considering spoken language a mysterious property of humans, it might be seen as the end result of a series of changes of primate sensory modalities which evolved first in an arboreal zone and which were later selectively modified during the adaptation of hominids to an open-country zone. After bipedalism had open up the vocal tract, there were good evolutionary reasons why the next step was bringing also the vocal-auditory channel under cortical control (vison and touch already were). Cortical control made voluntary sounds possible. In turn, the vocal sounds under volitional control got connected up with a cultural tradition involving symbols and intergenerational transmission (Maryanski, this volume).
 
 
6. The role of nonverbal communication for understanding human behavior
 
How can now these various research results on nonverbal communication, particularly the communciation of emotion, help us better understand human interaction? In the first place, it can be said that our everyday intuitions have here been substantiated: emotions are indeed easily perceived and felt, which gives us a basis for empathic understanding across languages and cultures. The "contagiousness" of some emotions suggests that emotions may indeed sweep through masses of people who are in close visual or physical contact (cf. Schiefenhovel, this volume). This is, in fact, a well-known social psychological process, which is probably directly connected to various collective phenomena, including Durkheim's famous "conscience collective."
 
Furthermore, we can relatively easily detect nonverbal signs of deception, or even embarrassment (Ekman 1985; Ekman and Keltner, this volume). Trying on now the hat of the evolutionary biologist, we may ask: Can this be given an evolutionary explanation? One argument is that detection of lying may be important for the evolution of cooperation. It is important for us to know whom we can trust in order to establish long-term relationships with such persons. Meanwhile, one good indicator that we will be able to take a person on his or her word is that the person is an obviously bad liar. This can be assessed from tell-tale signs (Frank, this volume). What is interesting in this account is that here nonverbal communication of genuine emotions, rather than the deceptive strategies typically favored in sociobiological reasoning (e.g., Dawkins and Krebs, 1978), is postulated as important for the evolution of social behavior.
 
We may also be able to spot lying because we are used to congruence between channels of communication (a phenomenon documented among others by Condon and Ogston, 1966). In this case it would  make us sensitive to incongruence between the verbal and nonverbal channels, or between stated and felt commitment. Indeed, recent research in neuroscience suggests that the brain appears to have the ability to constantly cross-check information within itself. One model for this cross-checking capacity is provided by the famous model of the "triune brain" (MacLean, 1990). Here more ancient parts of the brain (the mammalian limbic system which regulates emotions, and the Reptile complex, which is connected to primitive fight or flight behavior) are in constant communication with the neocortex.
 
It is true that nonverbal expression and body language form only a small part of the broad repertoire that humans have for communicating emotions or regulating status and power in interpersonal relationships (Heller, this volume). However, it may be an important tool for culture to work with. As a concrete example of nonverbal communication as a joint product of nature and culture, we can give  human posture. Here the natural constraints of the anatomy combines with the work requirements for particular professional groups, producing such things as backache (Heller, this volume). Another  example of nonverbal communication as a mediator between nature and culture is the postulated transmission of culture-specific emotional attitudes by child-rearing practices (Goldschmidt, this volume). These cultural practices interacting with the natural processes of child development may push personality development in a particular direction, emphasizing particular cultural sentiments and thus contributing to the production of a particular "national character". Exploring the possible mechanisms involved here, Goldschmidt quotes earlier anthropological work on Balinese culture by Bateson and Mead (1942) and does a reanalysis of his own earlier study of the Sebei in Uganda, where he relates the "idle hands and absent eyes" of Sebei mothers to the typical lack of affective ties in Sebei society (Goldschmidt, this volume).
 
At the most general level, a way of summarizing the basic message of the conference for the social sciences could be the following: Nonverbal processes of emotional communication are inseparable from cognitive processes and play a crucial role in human social interaction at all four relevant levels: the evolutionary, developmental, physiological and functional ones. Humans are phylogenetically predisposed to react emotionally to facial expressions, constantly switching roles as senders and receivers of nonverbal signals. When we see an expressed emotion, we mirror it, and it seems that this in turn elicits a physiological response and the appropriate feeling in us. This explains the ubiquity of empathy in interpersonal interaction. In turn, this process lies at the basis of social communication. We are biologically preprogrammed for sociality and continuously monitor one another for emotional cues which serve as guides to future interaction.
 
 
 
7. The biological grounding of social construction
 
Despite the seemingly increasing convergence between nature and nurture in nonverbal communication studies, the battle for an interactional approach is not yet won. Recently, there has been a resurgence of the militant cultural perspective, this time under the label of "the social construction of emotions" (e.g., Harre 1986). The argument here is that people learn to label a state of general physiological arousal based on categories obtained from their culture. (The physiological arousal as such is not in question).  To its structure, the social constructivist claim appears quite similar to the previous linguistic relativist thesis of the cultural determination of our categories of thought, except that here we are dealing with emotions rather than cognitions. A good example of the possibility of radical cultural or temporal conventionalism in nonverbal communication is for instance the code of silence in medieval monasteries, in which ostensibly "obvious" gestures and signs may have quite unexpected meanings. As to the social conventions typical for an epoch, interesting information can be derived from studying postures and gestures in medieval pictures (Nitschke, this volume). (Interestingly, however, even here, there appears to be a limited range of possibilities).
 
There is no doubt that culture has a major say in the case of nonverbal communication. We are here interested merely in pointing out the following: 1) There seems to exist a biological basis for cultural influences to work with, i.e. some capabilities are hard-wired and others develop particularly easily. This should come as no surprise to those who accept the idea of our innate capacity for language, critical periods for learning, or the idea of "stages of development". 2) There are cross-culturally understandable basic emotions and a universal basis for human empathy. This is another unsurprising point, it seems, considering humans' proven abilities to travel and get by without knowing languages.  3) Finally, while it is certainly possible to "manage" emotions to some extent (see e.g., Hochtchild, 1983), they cannot always be successfully brought under conscious control. More than a decade ago, in his remarkable attempt to bridge the gap between the two cultures, Vernon Reynolds (1980) argued that even though we construct our social reality in our minds, cultures have to work within the limits of human physical capabilities, and that stress is one of many examples of a conflict between our body and the exigencies of modern culture.
 
Interestingly, one of the most adamant current spokesmen against the social construction of emotions is a sociologist, Theodore Kemper, founding father of the recent field of "sociology of emotions" (Kemper 1978, 1987, 1990). In support of his position, he quotes physiological data (studies of epinephrine/norepinephrine levels, serotonin and activity patterns in the nervous systems). In this volume, another sociologist, Jonathan Turner provides a suggestive overview of the function and possible evolutionary rationale of nonverbal and emotional communication for human society. He suggests among other things that the development of emotional communication in humans was a necessary prerequisite for social bonding among asocial hominids (cf. Maryanski and Turner 1992).
 
Perhaps the best route for combatting exaggerated claims of the social construction of emotions may be to point to the close interrelation between cognition and emotion. Indeed, the "cognitive revolution's" overemphasis on the linguistic capabilities of humans makes it seem worthwhile to try to reestablish a central role of emotion as a guide for cognition (e.g., Plutchik 1984; Zajonc, 1980) To the extent one is willing to accept the reality of cognitive biases in human reasoning (Tversky and Kahneman 1974, Nisbett and Ross, 1980) it seems but a step to accepting the existence of basic emotional biases, too. There is exciting research going on in this area (e.g., Barkow, Tooby and Cosmides 1992). The question is what form these predispositions need to take - e.g., do we need to postulate the existence of ready-made Darwinian algoritms for problem-solving (Tooby and Cosmides, 1989, 1990), or should we rather settle for a minimalist approach, whereby it would suffice to postulate the existence of an initial inborn emotional bias for or against particular stimuli, which would thereafter be instrumental in the development of neural networks in the brain, mental maps, etc. - in short, for the cognitive development of the mind (Edelman, 1992).
 
The excitement of current research in nonverbal communication reinforces our belief that this is a strategical site for addressing the multi-level interaction between biology and culture. Our belief is that once it becomes again commonplace to consider also the biological make-up of humans as an element in social scientific explanations, a whole range of new theoretical possibilities will open up. We see as our task as editors to try to bring this sense of opportunity to the reader. At the very least, we hope to be able to convince social scientists to start considering the vast body of empirical data on nonverbal communication which is now accumulating within various fields, including the sophisticated findings from psychophysiology and neurobiology.
 
Even though it seems that the academic climate today is moving away from the extreme cultural determinism of recent years, it may still be necessary to add the following caveat. The fact that we are interested in looking closely at biological as well as social and psychological factors does not mean that we are suggesting any kind of "reduction" of the social sciences to biology. We want rather to explode the misconception that 'biology' is something monolithic, threatening and deterministic, or something that automatically precludes or excludes 'culture'. If anything, we want to point to the necessary "grounding" of our social and cultural capabilities in biological givens, and elucidate how these biological factors are systematically co-opted for cultural purposes, particularly for human interpersonal communication. In our view, nonverbal communication is not only a pedagogically useful site for concretely demonstrating the multi-level links between nature and nurture, it is the place where nature meets culture.