ess. Recently it has become necessary to expand this view. When people communicate they do much more than just toss the conversational ball back and forth. My own studies as well as those of others reveal a series of delicately controlled, culturally conditioned servomechanisms that keeps life on an even keel, much like the automatic pilot on the airplane. All of us are sensitive to subtle changes in the demeanor of the other person as he responds to what we are saying or doing. In most situations people will at first unconsciously and later consciously avoid escalation of what I have termed the adumbrative or foreshadowing part of a communication from the barely perceptible signs of annoyance to open hostility. In the animal world, if the adumbrative process is short-circuited or bypassed, vicious fighting is apt to occur. In humans in the international-intercultural sphere of life many difficulties can be traced to failure to read adumbrations correctly. In such instances, by the time people discover what is going on, they are so deeply involved that they can't back out.