Contagious Yawning

Contagious Yawning

Reviewed by Faisal Zaidi

The tendency to yawn after seeing, or reading about, another person's yawn, strongest among people who are close.

What it is

Robert Provine found that watching a series of yawns set off yawns in about half of viewers, and that reading about yawning could have a similar effect. Ivan Norscia and Elisabetta Palagi found that yawns spread most between relatives, then friends, then acquaintances, and least between strangers. Chimpanzees and dogs show a similar bias toward familiar yawners, and young children do not catch yawns.

In effect

In the article on why yawning is contagious, it is the effect being explained, from the first video studies to the debate about empathy.

What it does not say

It is a well-documented effect, but its cause is not settled: a review by Jorg Massen and Andrew Gallup finds the evidence linking it to empathy inconsistent.

Sources

  1. Provine, R. R. (2005). Yawning. American Scientist, 93(6), 532-539.
  2. Norscia, I., & Palagi, E. (2011). Yawn contagion and empathy in Homo sapiens. PLoS ONE.
  3. Campbell, M. W., & de Waal, F. B. M. (2011). Ingroup-outgroup bias in contagious yawning by chimpanzees supports link to empathy. PLoS ONE.
  4. Millen, A. E., & Anderson, J. R. (2011). Neither infants nor toddlers catch yawns from their mothers. Biology Letters, 7(3), 440-442.
  5. Massen, J. J. M., & Gallup, A. C. (2017). Why contagious yawning does not (yet) equate to empathy. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 80, 573-585.