• Question: Why is yawning contagious?

    Asked by kelan to Derek, Elaine, Heather, Keith, Bimpe on 26 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Heather Eyre

      Heather Eyre answered on 26 Jun 2013:

      You can’t catch a yawn but you are more likely to yawn after someone else does.

      It’s similar to laughing in that in within a group when one yawns chances are someone else will yawn! It’s all about empathy, and so you are subconsciously agreeing that you are tired (or bored!).

      But there have been yawn seeding experiments that show that it doesn’t always ring true. These experiments are usually with complete strangers so maybe they would lack some of the group behaviours that would be found in a group of friends!

    • Photo: Keith Siew

      Keith Siew answered on 27 Jun 2013:

      A cool thing about yawning though is that its not just unique to humans… as it occurs in other mammalian species as well… and empathetic yawning can happen between pets and their owners too!

      There was an idea out there for quite some time that yawning had to do with excess levels of carbon dioxide and an early warning sign… thus everyone else learnt to copy as a safety mechanism… but I’m not sure that the idea still holds any water and may have been debunked.

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