Is Yawning Contagious

¶ … Forces and Contagious Yawning

Is Yawning Contagious

Contagious yawning is believed to represent instinctive social sharing of physiological and emotional states, and could therefore a form of innate empathy (reviewed by Helt et al., 1620). In support of this hypothesis functional magnetic resonance imaging of human brains reacting to soundtracks of people yawning revealed enhanced brain activity in the right posterior inferior frontal gyrus, an area involved in empathy (Arnott, Singhal, and Goodale 335). Additional support comes from finding lower rates of contagious yawning in individuals suffering from mental disorders that are associated with impaired expressions of empathy, like schizophrenia (Haker and Rossler 352) and children with autism spectrum disorder (Helt et al. 1620).

Decades of social research has revealed that a person's attitude towards another determines how they interact with that person and are modifiable by situational forces (Zimbardo, Chapter 12), which suggests that empathic capacity may also be plastic and determined by situational cues. To provide further support for the existence of contagious yawning, this possibility was investigated by measuring the prevalence of contagious yawns in observers viewing videos of individuals reacting empathically or angrily to an episode of Dr. Phil.

Materials and Methods

Study subjects (observers, N = 100) were randomly divided into two equal groups. Both groups watched videos of an individual (watcher; independent variable) reacting to an episode of Dr. Phil, but one group viewed the watcher reacting empathically to a guest on the show (empathic reaction), while the other group viewed the watcher reacting in a negative way (angry reaction). About ae of the way through the video the watcher yawns and observers were monitored for a response. Scores between the two conditions were compared using the student T test. Observers were blind to the true nature of the experiment and were told that they were going to be interviewed following the session about the watcher's emotional state.

Results

The mean number of observers who yawned were significantly different between the two groups (p = 0.016, one-tailed; see figure to the right). We found that 52% of empathic reaction observers yawned within 2 minutes after the watcher yawned, compared to 30% of angry reaction observers.

Discussion

The findings presented here support the theory that situational forces can determine the prevalence of contagious yawning, and thereby provide additional support for its existence. A more profound implication based on these results is that situational forces can in some cases be dominant over instinctive behavioral reactions (Zimbardo; Chapter 12).