Handbook of Communication and Social Interaction Skills

Communication processes are a source of fascination for scholars and laypersons
alike. Our collective penchant for inspecting, explicating, and critiquing this uniquely
human activity is remarkable, on one hand, for its enduring character (being the
object of two millennia of recorded intellectual scrutiny), and on the other, for
the panoply specific phenomena, philosophical perspectives, and theoretical frameworks
brought to bear in this endeavor. And yet, there is a thread that runs through
all this work—over the centuries and across the spectrum of thought. This unifying
theme is a concern with skill—the notion that communication may be done “well”
or “poorly”—and skill enhancement, the idea that individuals, properly informed or
trained, might come to “do it better.”
The focus on communication skill is doubtless due, in part, to the fact that much
communication is a pragmatic enterprise—directed at accomplishing an array of
practical tasks (e.g., negotiating treaties to resolve armed conflicts between nations,
conveying information clearly in the classroom, winning votes in popular elections,
consoling a sad friend, preserving one’s property and freedom in courts of law,
enhancing cohesiveness in work teams, settling on a price for potatoes in the village
marketplace). But the importance of communication skills does not stem entirely from
the influence they exert in accomplishing such specific, situation-bound objectives.
Beyond these narrower ends, professional success, relationship satisfaction, personal
fulfillment, psychological well-being, and even physical health depend upon the
social interaction skills of the individual—and those of his or her associates and
interlocutors.
In light of the importance of communication skills, it is hardly surprising that
they have been a continuing object of study by scholars and researchers from numerous
disciplines, including virtually every branch of communication (e.g., interpersonal,
group, organizational, health, public, mass), several areas of psychology
(cognitive, social, clinical, developmental, and industrial), as well as a variety of other
disciplines, including education, family studies, business management, and nursing.
Scholars investigate public speaking, group discussion, listening, persuasion, conflict
management, explaining, organizational leadership, social support, relationship
management, and on and on, frequently with an eye toward helping people to learn
to do these things more effectively.
The enduring and widespread concern with communication skill and skill enhancement
suggested to us that a survey of work in these areas would have broad
appeal for scholars and students across the spectrum of disciplines devoted to the
study of social interaction. Equally important, we became convinced of the practical
value of reviews of current research and theory on social skill for clinicians, therapists,
trainers, and laypersons. These complementary concerns, scholarly and practical, led
us to undertake the project that culminated in the production of this volume.
The initial impetus for the book, then, was simply the idea that social skills are
important, and that, for this reason, there is real value associated with being conversant
with the work on skilled performance, skill development, and skill assessment.
As the project took shape, however, we articulated four ancillary features that we felt
would make the book particularly useful.
First, the contributors to this volume were selected because they had established
reputations as preeminent researchers and writers in their respective domains of
study. These authors, drawn from several different academic disciplines, were invited
to contribute to this project because their expertise and professional standing
made them particularly well qualified to prepare chapters in their respective areas of
specialization.
Second, this volume provides a broad, comprehensive treatment of work on social
interaction skill and skill acquisition.We originally identified approximately 30 topic
areas and research traditions for inclusion, and, thanks to the efforts of the contributors,
we obtained chapters for 24 of these areas. Thus, the chapters in this book
reflect a breadth of scholarly work pertinent to communication and social interaction
skill.
Third, the emphasis for each chapter is on providing an up-to-date review of
research in the area. In some cases, previous reviews of the topics addressed in this
book are now 10 to 20 years old, and for other topic areas, there simply have been
no prior reviews.
Finally, each chapter emphasizes, at least to some extent, empirically supported
strategies for developing and enhancing specific skills. All theoretical orientations are
not equally congenial to the notion of skill development, and prescriptions for skilled
conduct are better supported in some literatures than in others. Still, each of the chapters
suggests important implications for improving communication effectiveness. In
the end, then, our aim was to produce the most comprehensive, authoritative source
available on communication skills and skill enhancement—a volume with both practical
and theoretical significance.
The chapters comprising this volume are organized into five major units: (1) general
theoretical and methodological issues (e.g., models of skill acquisition, methods
of skill assessment, techniques for social skill training), (2) fundamental interaction
skills (i.e., those that are transfunctional and transcontextual, e.g., nonverbal
skills, message production skills, message reception skills), (3) function-focused skills
(e.g., informing, persuading, managing conflict, providing emotional support),
(4) skills used in the management of personal relationships (e.g., friendships, dating
relationships, marriage, parenting), and (5) skills employed in various public and
professional contexts (e.g., negotiation, group decision making, teaching).
The authors of each chapter were asked to address a set of core questions or issues.
It was not our intention that these questions serve as the organizational scheme
for the chapters; rather they were intended to assist the authors in producing more
comprehensive reviews and to provide greater coherence across the various domains
being surveyed (recognizing, of course, that the status of the literature in particular
areas dictated that certain chapters would touch on only some of these questions).
The core questions posed for our contributors, then, were as follows:
1. What is the nature of the skill (or skills) with which you are concerned? How should
these skills be conceptualized and defined? What does it mean to be skilled with
respect to this area?
2. What is the practical significance of possessing this communication skill? What enablements
or advantages does this skill provide? What are the consequences of low
skill in this area?
3. What methodological issues are encountered in assessing and/or studying this communication
skill? What are particularly good ways of assessing this skill?
4. What individual-difference variables have been found to be related to this communication
skill? How do these variables contribute to competence in or enactment of this
skill?
5. In what contexts or domains is this skill typically used? With what effect?
6. What are the implications of research on this skill for training and development? How
can people become more proficient with respect to this skill?
Taken as a whole, this book reveals that social scientists have made considerable
progress in probing the dynamics of skillful interaction and skill acquisition. In these
chapters the reader will find summaries of programmatic research, sophisticated
conceptual frameworks for organizing and making sense of those research findings,
and practical guidelines for social conduct and training that are based on theory and
data. At the same time, a look to the future suggests the need for further work to
address a number of issues:

Inmanyof the domains surveyed here, there is a need for better, theoretically grounded,
models of skilled performance. What counts as “skillful” communication in a particular
domain and why? What empirically based criteria should be used in assessing
skillfulness in varied forms of communication?

What are the personal, relational, social, and organizational consequences of skilled
and unskilled communicative performances in various domains? Why do communication
skills matter and just how do they matter?

How do people learn or acquire various communication skills “naturally” over the
course of development? How can parents, teachers, consultants, trainers, and therapists
enhance various communication skills more effectively? What theoretical models
of skill training and development do the best job of informing educational efforts? What
instructional or training methods are most effective with particular skills?

What strategies should be utilized in more thoroughly evaluating skill training efforts?
What are the most sound approaches for assessing whether (a) programs actually teach
intended skills (instructional fidelity), (b) students or clients learn the skills taught
(instructional effectiveness), (c) students actually utilize the skills they have been
taught in real-world situations (skill transfer and generalization), (d) learned skills
continue to be used over time (skill persistence) and (e) students achieve desirable personal,
relational, and instrumental outcomes when using the skills they have learned
(skill effectiveness)?
Beyond these directions for future work, it should also be apparent that, despite
our intention to produce the most comprehensive survey of social interaction skills
possible, there are communication skill domains that are not represented in this book.
We wanted to include a handful of other chapters, including ones on computermediated
communication, listening, social perception, interaction management, and
presentational skills. Unfortunately, for one reason or another, we were unable to
include reviews on these topics (perhapswewere lacking in requisite communication
skills!). Their absence should not be construed as any indication that we consider
them somehow less important, and, indeed, we hope to include such chapters in
subsequent editions of this book.
We wish to express our heartfelt appreciation to the people who’ve played such
important roles in this project: to Karin Wittig Bates at Lawrence Erlbaum for all her
work in managing the details associated with the production of a book this size,
and especially to Linda Bathgate, who believed in this project from the start, and
supported us throughout its completion. Finally, we are indebted to the authors of
the chapters who shared our commitment to the importance of this undertaking and
so generously contributed their time and expertise in bringing it to be.