986 BOOK REVIEWS

B. THOMPSON: Canonical Correlation Analysis Uses and Interpretation. Sage University Paper 47, Sage Publications, London, (1985) 69 pp., E4.95.

Canonical correlation analysis involves the assessment of the relationship between two sets of variables and includes several other methods of multivariate analysis as special cases. The method was originally developed some 50 years ago but in common with many other multivariate methods has only become widely accessible with the advent of software packages such as SAS and SPSS. Despite its availability however, substantial applications in the behavioural sciences are relatively few, perhaps because of its mathematical complexity.

Professor Thompson’s little book may go some way to overcoming this problem since it gives an account of the method without using a great deal of heavy matrix algebra, but instead relies on practical examples to give an intuitive feel for what a canonical correlational analysis has to offer. A minor irritation is the author’s obsession with quotations from other workers; these occur no less than 40 times in a text of only 65 pages! Despite this, however, this text gives a useful introduction to a neglected technique.

BRIAN Evarum

D. FONTANA: Teaching and Personality. Basil Blackwell, Oxford (1986) vii + 200 pp. E19.50 net hardback, E6.95 paperback.

Teaching and Personality is an updated second edition of David Fontana’s earlier book, Pesonality and Education. It shares the same aim, “. to give teachers and all those interested in education an introduction to the whole field of personality, emphasising throughout the practical lessons that can be drawn for use in the classroom”. (p. vii)

An outline of the contents will indicate the author’s wide remit. After a short introduction providing a working definition of personality, the initial chapter looks at heredity and environment issues. Chapter 2 considers personality development. Chapters 3 to 8 touch on various approaches to personality; psychodynamic, humanistic, field theory, trait based approaches, state based approaches and behaviourism. The final three chapters focus respectively on personality and cognition; teacher personality; and extreme personality problems.

This broad scope is impressive in an introductory book but it leads to certain imbalances when one remembers the authors’s aim to relate his outline of personality to practical education. For some aspects of personality yield less of practical educational use than others. This is evident in the chapter on heredity and environment where the author is able only to conclude rather weakly, “From the point of view of the teacher the particular importance of the findings quoted in this chapter is that the child who appears awkward or difficult, violent or aggressive, withdrawn or sullen, should not automatically be held to blame”. (pp. 1617).

Yet one has only to turn to the subsequent chapter on personality development to find by contrast a fund of information useful to the teacher.

The author might better have shortened some of the chapters less practically relevant to education and expanded the more pertinent chapters even though this would be at the cost of his broad and even-handed outline of the areas of personality.

The style of the book is fittingly relaxed and conversational, helping the complex subject seem less daunting and therefore more accessible. Generally, the book is mercifully short on jargon and refreshingly easy to read.

MICHAEL FARRELL

D. L. F. NILSEN and A. P. NIL~EN (Eds): Whimsy IV. Humor Across the Disciplines. Proceedings of the 1985 Conference: Humor Across the Disciplines. W.H.I.M., English Dept, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287, (1986). 304 pp.

WHIMSY IV (Western Humor and Irony Membership Serial Yearbook) contains the abstracts of papers read at the 4th conference of WHIM held in Tempe, Arizona in 1985. This conference is multidisciplinary, including disciplines such as literature, education, business, psychology, medicine and music. In addition to the scientific program, the reader of the book is supplied with information about comedy clubs, humour journal addresses and humour organizations.

The book is entertaining to read and enables the reader to get a quick overview of the approaches to the study of humour employed by different disciplines. However, the section on psychology is very short (approximately 20 pages) and does not adequately represent the state of contemporary psychological humour research. Those readers interested in the study of individual differences in humour will be particularly disappointed because this approach is not included.

The main aim of humour research today should be basic research based on scientific principles; efforts should be made to reach a standard comparable to that of other fields of psychology. Unfortunately, there is a tendency in the field of humour research to focus on spectacular hypotheses that are presented in an entertaining fashion but without convincing data bases. This approach is readily apparent in this book.

WILLIBALD RUCH