I’m sure you’ve all heard that watching someone else yawn makes you yawn. I have, and I am certainly a victim to this. However, not everyone participates in the contagious yawn. What separates those who participate in the contagious yawn and those who do not? Psychologists have a theory that your response and participation to others’ yawning is correlated with how nice of a person you are.
The word that psychologists often connect with yawning is empathy. Empathy, by definition, is the ability to understand and connect with others’ emotional states. Empathy is a part of cognitive development that each child is supposed to attain as they grow up. Their environment and genetics play a significant factor in the exposure to empathy attainment. Psychology Today reported that a 2010 study from the University of Connecticut found that most children aren’t vulnerable to contagious yawning until they’re approximately four years old, which is said to be because the toddlers have not understood the concept of empathy yet.
According to Josh Clark, Leeds University in England conducted a study involving eighty students. Each person was instructed to sit by themselves in a waiting room, along with a disguised assistant who yawned in order to receive responses from the individuals. The students were then given a test showing various images of eyes and asked what emotion each image exhibited.
The eighty students were split in half – half psychology majors, half engineering majors. The hypothesis was that the psychology students would yawn more than the engineering students because their profession encourages empathy and emphasizes understanding others’ emotions. The study showed that the psychology students yawned contagiously an average of 5.5 times in the waiting room and scored 28 out of 40 on the emotional test (70%). The engineering students, who were predicted to score lower because of the personality traits associated with those who excel in science and mathematics, yawned an average of 1.5 times and scored 25.5 out of 40 on the following test (approximately 63%). One could argue that 25.5 opposed to 28 does not make a significant difference, but it must be noted that the emotional test has potential for factors of error. 5.5 in comparison to 1.5 is a substantial difference. One thing I found intriguing about this study was that women were not reported to be more empathetic than men, which you would expect because the typical stereotype of women is to be caring, nurturing, etc.
In 2008, The University of London also conducted a study on this theory, but used dogs rather than humans. The simple fact that a dog is a man’s best friend convinced Ramiro Joly-Mascheroni that a dog was the perfect player in displaying empathy.
Jason Goldman wrote, “In one condition, the experimenter, who was a stranger to the dogs, attracted the dogs’ attention and then initiated a genuine yawn. The yawn was repeated for five minutes after re-establishing eye contact with the dog, which meant that the number of yawns varied between ten and nineteen per individual. In the control condition, the experimenter displayed a fake yawn, which mimicked the mouth opening and closing actions, but not the vocalization or other subtle muscular changes.”
Image taken from: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtful-animal/files/2012/05/dog-yawn.jpg
(a) the dog watches the stranger yawning
(b) the dog begins to yawn while the stranger finishes his yawn
(c) the dog finishes its yawn
The results? Human yawning made 21 out of 29 dogs, or 72%, yawn in response. It was reported that none of the dogs yawned in the control condition.
So, as it stands, this study along with many others claim that yawning is correlated with how nice of a person, or being in general you are. Stay tuned for my next blog which will explore the null hypothesis stating that yawning and empathy have nothing to do with each other.
Sources:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtful-animal/2012/05/17/contagious-yawning-evidence-of-empathy/
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201403/why-is-yawning-so-contagious
http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/contagious-yawn.htm
This is very interesting! I of course heard that yawning was contagious but I never really knew why. What I’m curious to know is if we know the person that we see or hear yawning, if we are more likely to yawn with them rather than seeing a stranger yawn. While people differ in how much empathy they can feel, this is definitely altered by the relationship with a person. You’re likely to feel more upset if you find out that your friend failed a test, rather than just a random stranger. So maybe relationship could be affecting yawning too? Just a thought!
I actually have never really considered the science behind why yawns are contagious. Obviously the thought has crossed my mind when I see one person yawn and suddenly an entire lecture hall is doing the same. But the science behind it being that empathy is the leading factor in this? Never would have thought about it. I like how the science behind here was explored in a concise way and experiments with both human and animal were explored. What I took away from this is that yawning does indeed become effected by empathy.
Yes, they were unaware that their number of yawns were being counted. It was implied by saying that there was a disguised individual in the waiting room who kept yawning. That is how the number of yawns from each individual were calculated. I do agree that it is hard to split the students up by major, but I suppose they chose engineering because it is quite opposite from psychology. The dog study supported the theory in a more clear manner. I agree that there should be more studies to support this, and there is one intriguing one involving chimps found on http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201403/why-is-yawning-so-contagious. I did not say whether I believe this theory is true or not; I am not bias about this topic. I am currently writing a blog that supports the null hypothesis as well.
I’ve never thought about this before but after reading your blog, it makes a lot of sense. I even read the hypothesis out loud to my roommate and she said it made sense because it’s an empathy thing, which is exactly the word you said the psychologists associated yawning with. I guess it is common to assume so. The studies you referenced support it but are unclear. In the first student, were the 80 students unaware that they were being evaluated on yawning? I’m also not sure that dividing the students up by majors would honestly be that effective because it’s based on how nice someone is not how much they understand human emotion. I don’t think they are then same thing. I think there should be further studies on this hypothesis to provide more convincing evidence.