The Handbook of Communication Science and Biology

Kory Floyd, René Weber, Kory Floyd, Rene Weber, René Weber, Kory Floyd, Rene Weber

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781351235563
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Business Communication
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The Handbook of Communication Science and Biology charts the state of the art in the field, describing relevant areas of communication studies where a biological approach has been successfully applied. The book synthesizes theoretical and empirical development in this area thus far and proposes a roadmap for future research.

As the biological approach to understanding communication has grown, one challenge has been the separate evolution of research focused on media use and effects and research focused on interpersonal and organizational communication, often with little intellectual conversation between the two areas. The Handbook of Communication Science and Biology is the only book to bridge the gap between media studies and human communication, spurring new work in both areas of focus.

With contributions from the field's foremost scholars around the globe, this unique book serves as a seminal resource for the training of the current and next generation of communication scientists, and will be of particular interest to media and psychology scholars as well.

Part I

COMMUNICATION SCIENCE AND BIOLOGY

1

Introduction

Kory Floyd and René Weber

INTRODUCTION

To call human behavior multifactorial is a profound understatement. Communication and social interaction are shaped by virtually innumerable influences, many of which are regularly adjudicated by social scientists. These influences include, among others, culture (Matsumoto & Hwang, 2016), ethnicity (Bernhold & Giles, 2018), socioeconomic status (Betancourt, Brodsky, & Hurt, 2015), parenting style (Moreno-Ruiz, Martínez-Ferrer, & García-Bacete, 2019), sex (Despins, Turkstra, Struchen, & Clark, 2016), gender (Wilhelm, 2018), sexual orientation (Mark, Garcia, & Fisher, 2015), age (Fitzpatrick, Fox, Hoffman, & Dehlendorf, 2016), religion (Croucher, Sommier, Kuchma, & Melnychenko, 2015), mass media (Andersen, Bjarnøe, Albæk, & De Vreese, 2016), social media (Neubaum & Krämer, 2017), and technology (Cantoni & Danowski, 2015; Rogers, 1986).

As potent as these characteristics of social behavior are, however, none can truly be called universal. Many behaviors vary as a function of culture, socioeconomic status, or media exposure, for instance, but not all do (see, e.g., Russell, 2017). Similarly, women and men differ in some ways but not in others (Zell, Krizan, & Teeter, 2015). As Floyd and Afifi (2012) contend, however, perhaps the only universal characteristic—applying without exception to communication behavior—is biology. No verbal or nonverbal message can be either encoded or decoded, that is, without the direct intervention of multiple anatomical and physiological systems. Natural variation in anatomical and physiological systems also affects the qualities of some communication behaviors. For instance, natural pitch variance during phonation varies as a function of laryngeal size and the length and thickness of the vocal folds (Hollien, 2014), whereas decoding accuracy for facial emotion displays varies as a function of developmental stage (Herba & Phillips, 2004), and all of these influences are shaped by natural selection. Conversely, deficits in anatomical and physiological systems—for example, in cases of traumatic brain injury (Rousseaux, Vérigneaux, & Kozlowski, 2010) or sensory impairments such as deafness and blindness (Damen, Janssen, Ruijssenaars, & Schuengel, 2015)—correspond to limitations in social interaction ability that routinely require remediation through education and therapy.

Absolutely none of these observations renders irrelevant the often-substantial effects of proximal environmental factors, such as culture, economic status, religion, or social media use. As the theorizing in Chapter 3 by Tooby and Cosmides so profoundly demonstrates, species’ genome and their environment co-evolve! What these assertions do imply is that a science of human social behavior that is willfully or even unintentionally ignorant of the biological and physiological substrates of such behavior will likely overlook strong and enduring influences altogether, or will misattribute their effects, such as by misinterpreting parent-child similarities in genetically heritable behavior patterns as outcomes of parenting style. It also implies that without biological perspectives, many of our communication theories will likely remain proximate theories, or “theoretical frames” that are inductively built over time to explain some specific aspect of communication behavior. Sometimes, these kinds of theories duplicate past theorizing in communication and other disciplines, and as such only marginally increase knowledge and contribute to what is known as additive science. To be clear, there is nothing wrong with attempts to explain how observed phenomena (concepts) relate to each other and predict other phenomena; most of very successful engineering research is devoted to solving “how” questions. But the core scientific mission is to generate explanations of why phenomena relate to each other and why they may exist in the first place, and then demonstrate these relationships with reproducible empirical evidence (Weber, Sherry, & Mathiak, 2008). Without adding a biological perspective to communication science that is firmly grounded in sound principles of natural selection, we believe that it will be difficult, if not impossible, to enhance our theorizing with ultimate why explanations.

The Handbook of Communication Science and Biology articulates and synthesizes the theoretical and empirical work identifying the neurological, genetic, anatomical, hormonal, and peripheral physiological antecedents, correlates, and consequences of human social behavior. As described below, this area of focus has burgeoned within the communication discipline in recent years, supporting the development of new theories, the compilation of special issues of communication journals (including three in 2015 alone), and the organization of a new International Communication Association (ICA) interest group with the same name as this book: The ICA Communication Science and Biology Interest Group (www.commscience.org). Since its foundation in 2016 with René Weber as inaugural chair, the membership of this ICA interest group is steadily increasing and it is predicted that the interest group will become an ICA Division within the next two years. The Handbook charts the state of the art in the field by summarizing and critiquing the present and potential applications of the biological perspective to a wide range of communicative and social behaviors.

We begin this introductory chapter with a brief history of the biological perspective on social behavior as it has evolved in the communication discipline, noting both its triumphs and its challenges. More details regarding its history and the philosophical and epistemological foundations of biological reasoning in communication science can be found in Chapter 2 by Capella, in this volume, in Weber, Sherry, and Mathiak (2008), and Weber, Eden, Huskey, Mangus, and Falk (2015). We then offer an overview of this Handbook, which was organized intentionally to respond to existing challenges and position the biological perspective to advance communication science in substantive ways in the coming years.

COMMUNICATION AND BIOLOGY: A BRIEF HISTORY

Attention to the biological dimensions of social behavior is not particularly novel in allied social sciences. Theory development, coursework, and empirical research on the biological and physiological correlates and effects of social interaction have a longstanding history in the fields of psychophysiology, biological psychiatry, and behavioral medicine, for instance (see Weber, 2015a, 2015b). A focus on the biological causes, correlates, and outcomes of communication behavior has been slower to develop, although it was certainly foreshadowed by seminal writings such as Cappella’s (1991) article, “The biological origins of automated patterns of human interaction,” published in Communication Theory.

Despite drawing attention to the benefits of understanding communication behavior from a biological perspective, Cappella’s article did not necessarily have an immediate effect on how communication behavior is conceptualized or measured, at least in the communication discipline. Even by the end of the same decade, Craig’s (1999) enumeration of the seven principal theoretical traditions in the communication field had not yet reflected any ontologies acknowledging the role of biology, anatomy, or physiology as a cause, correlate, or consequence of communicative behavior.

In the intervening years, however, researchers, including (in alphabetical order) Falk, Lang, Reeves, Weber, and Zillmann in media studies and Afifi, Beatty, Floyd, and McCroskey in interpersonal communication, have constructed compelling theoretical and empirical bases for considering the neurological, genetic, endocrine, immunological, muscular, hematological, and cardiovascular dimensions of social behavior. Although this research may have been characterized as being in its relative infancy at the turn of the 21st century, it has made substantial strides since that time and has established itself as a viable paradigm for understanding communication behavior.

Several pieces of data support this contention. In 2006, for instance, Floyd edited a special issue of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships focused on the biological dimensions of social behavior. Nine years later, in 2015, three journals—Communication Monographs, Communication Methods and Measures, and the Journal of Media Psychology—published special issues on the topic in the same year. Two focused on original research studies and theory (Communication Monographs, 82, edited by Tamara Afifi; and the Journal of Media Psychology, 27(3), edited by René Weber). One double special issue was dedicated to methodological issues around biological communication research (Communication Methods and Measures, 9(1 & 2), edited by René Weber). In addition, prior to the foundation of ICA’s Communication Science and Biology Interest Group, there were three ICA pre-conferences (2013 in London, 2014 in Seattle, and 2015 in San Juan) on the topic of “Communication Science—Evolution, Biology, and Brains,” chaired and organized by René Weber and a team of junior communication scientists. With more than 100 participants each, attendance was unusually high for an ICA pre-conference. The conference presence together with the representation of research and theory in special issues of the field’s flagship journals is a testament to the increasing relevance and visibility of biological dimensions in communication.

As the biological approach to understanding communication has grown, however, one challenge has been that research focused on media use/media effects and research focused on interpersonal/organizational communication have evolved separately and largely independently, often with little intellectual conversation between the two areas. This gap has shrunk in recent years, thanks in part to the aforementioned special issues of journals and pre-conference programming at ICA that have helped to make each area’s work familiar to those in the other area. Before now, however, no substantial repository has existed of the discipline’s theoretical and empirical contributions to the study of communication and biology that would bridge the gap between media and interpersonal communication behavior and spur new work, including integrative work, in both areas of focus. The Handbook of Communication Science and Biology represents a significant step toward filling that emergent need.

This volume comprehensively charts the field and sets the agenda for future scientific research on the biological dimensions of communication behavior. By highlighting the work of the foremost experts in the area, we anticipate that this Handbook will serve as a seminal resource for the training of the current and next generation of communication scientists. It will boost the intellectual foundations for the study of communication and biology and provide readers with an extensive overview of the current state of affairs in this evolving field across its diverse epistemological, theoretical, and methodological traditions.

STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK

We elected to organize the book into five principal Parts: (1) Communication Science and Biology; (2) Evolutionary Perspectives; (3) Communication and Media Neuroscience; (4) Interpersonal Communication; and (5) Integrated Perspectives. Chapters in Part I provide a broad introduction for a diverse readership that will approach this book from different theoretical, methodological, and epistemological perspectives. Besides this introductory chapter, Chapter 2 by Cappella maps biological communication research as a growing field of inquiry in its own right, outlines some of its historical trajectories, and explores its unifying themes and potential for the discipline.

Part II focuses on the use of evolutionary reasoning to explore and explain communication behavior. This section begins with Chapter 3 by Tooby and Cosmides, pioneers in the development of evolutionary psychology. Their chapter on natural selection and the nature of communication outlines the foundational principles that provide why explanations for the origin and evolution of communication. Following Tooby and Cosmides, in Chapter 4, Reid et al. apply costly signaling theory—a sub-theory of natural selection—to human communication phenomena, and Bryant explores the evolution, structure, and functions of human laughter in Chapter 5. York discusses the use of behavior genetics and twin studies in communication research in Chapter 6, and Brill and Schwab anchor Part II, in Chapter 7, by exploring the proper use of evolutionary reasoning in communication scholarship.

Parts III and IV are dedicated to research on the biological antecedents, correlates, and outcomes of media and interpersonal communication, respectively. In Part III, Schmälzle and Grall start off in Chapter 8 by explaining why and how mediated messages have the capacity to synchronize brain responses, and they introduce a corresponding, innovative analytical paradigm in neuroimaging—inter-subject correlation analysis—which does not require tightly controlled experimental conditions and allows for multi-modal, complex stimulus material, such as a movie or a public service announcement. These new ideas are followed by the neuroscience of persuasion (Chapter 9 by Baek et al.), social media (Chapter 10 by Meshi & Özdem-Mertens), and political knowledge and misinformation (Chapter 11 by Coronel & Bucy). The next two chapters focus on one of the oldest and perhaps the most central concepts in the cognitive sciences: attention. In Chapter 12, Weber and Fisher advance the synchronization theory of flow experiences which conceptualizes flow as a synchronization of specific attentional and reward networks. Fisher and Keene further explore attentional and working memory networks and their involvement in functional and dysfunctional media multitasking beh...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Series Editor’s Foreword
• About the Editors
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• PART I: COMMUNICATION SCIENCE AND BIOLOGY
• PART II: EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVES
• PART III: COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA NEUROSCIENCE
• PART IV: INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION
• PART V: INTEGRATED PERSPECTIVES
• Index