why is yawning contagious?

Answer 1

You can yawn for three reasons
(1) lack of oxygen in the air
(2) tiredness, physical or mental
(3) sicknesses, such as multiple sclerosis

We learn to yawn from a very young age: even foetuses have been seen to yawn in utero, though it can't be because there's not enough oxygen in the womb - foetuses breathe intravenously. So it might be that they're bored with their parents already. But honestly, they do yawn. Just google it. No don't get bored yet, I have more interesting things to add.

Whatever the reason of a yawn is, it's quite logical that yawning is contagious. If one should yawn because there isn't enough oxygen, the other is likely to suffer the same air starvation... If one yawns because of physical tiredness, the other is either yawning because he/she is equally knackered, or yawning because physical activities are a boring prospect. Add to that yawning because of boredom i.e. mental tiredness: the other will yawn because the first is boring, or what they're both doing is boring. And lastly, should the reason be an illness, the other will yawn sympathetically. Either that, or the other is shocked one is ill, and his dropping mouth and gaping stare is misinterpretated as a yawn.

Silly laughs, crying and grunting are contagious too, but for that we'll need to study hauntings, toddlers and hardrock fans. We'll get into that at a later time.

Lastly, if I might just ask something to yawhwoon who responded earlier: are babaies psychotic? "Now you're thinking, what humans are not self-aware? Schizophrenics sometimes have trouble with self-recognition so they will not find yawning contagious. Babies won't yawn contagiously until they're more than a year old." You seemed to point in that direction ;o)

Answer 2

I believe that "yahwhoon" has some really good stuff there but I have to question the Yawning and sleeping in the trees part about humans. If this were a primitive / natural thing then when any other animal yawned it would trigger the same response in like animals.
I have two dogs, when one yawns the other does not. So either both are schitzo or the theory falls apart.

We know that yawning signifies being tired and sometimes just upon waking while doing a good stretch.
There fore it has to do with oxygenating the body before and after sleep.

But this still does not explain the contagious part.
If you have noticed it is not only the yawn but also the sleepy feeling comes along with it. Usually people will say stop that to the one who started it, as it has that strong of an effect.

So I feel it also has to do with a chemical release in the brain and when you see someone else getting their "fix" you want yours too.

Just like a drug!

So how's that???

Answer 3

Researchers recently found that yawning isn’t only catching among people; it is also among chimpanzees. No one has devised a fully convincing explanation of why.

Compounding the mystery is the odd way in which the contagious power of yawning is largely unconscious. We can see someone yawn, yearn to replicate the action ourselves, and do it, all without thinking about it. Other times we’re aware it is happening, though it still floats somewhere beneath the realm of reason and of purposeful actions.

So what gives? In an effort to find the answer, the Finnish government recently funded a brain scanning study. The results turned up some hard-to-interpret, possible clues. It also confirmed the obvious: yawn contagion is largely unconscious. Wherever it might affect the brain, it bypasses the known brain circuitry for consciously analyzing and mimicking other people’s actions.

This circuitry is called the “mirror-neuron system,” because it contains a special type of brain cells, or neurons, that become active both when their owner does something, and when he or she senses someone else doing the same thing.

Mirror neurons typically become active when a person consciously imitates an action of someone else, a process associated with learning. But they seem to play no role in yawn contagiousness, the researchers in the new study found. The cells are have no extra activity during contagious yawning compared with during other non-contagious facial movements, they observed.

Brain activity “associated with viewing another person yawn seems to circumvent the essential parts of the MNS [mirror neuron system], in line with the nature of contagious yawns as automatically released behavioural acts—rather than truly imitated motor patterns that would require detailed action understanding,” wrote the researchers, with the Helsinki University of Technology and the Research Centre Jülich, Germany. The findings are published in the February issue of the research journal Neuroimage.

But if seeing someone yawn doesn’t activate these centers, what does it do to the brain? The researchers found that it appears to strongly activate at least one brain area, called the superior temporal sulcus. But this activation was unrelated to any desire to yawn in response, so it may be irrelevant to the contagion question, the researchers added.

Possibly more significant, they wrote, was the apparent deactivation of a second brain area, called the left periamygdalar region. The more strongly a participant reported wanting to yawn in response to another person’s yawn, the stronger was this deactivation.

“This finding represents the first known neurophysiological signature of perceived yawn contagiousness,” the researchers wrote.

Exactly what the finding means is less clear, they acknowledged. The periamygdalar region is a zone that lies alongside the amygdala, an almond-shaped structure deep in the brain in the area of the side of the head. The periamygdalar region has been linked to the unconscious analysis of emotional expressions in faces. Why it would be deactivated in tandem with yawn contagion is unclear, the researchers said.

One thing seems clear from the study is that “contagious yawning does not rely on brain mechanisms of action understanding,” wrote one of the researchers, Riitta Hari of the Helsinki University of Technology, in a recent email. Rather, she continued, it seems to be an “‘automatically’ released (and most likely very archaic) motor pattern,” or sequence of physical actions.

In the study, volunteers looked at videos of actors yawning or making other mouth movements. Meanwhile their brains were scanned using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, a system that shows the amount of activity or work going on in various brain areas based on the amount of oxygen being used up there. The volunteers were later asked how strongly they had been tempted to yawn while viewing the pictures.

Apart from the physical brain mechanisms of yawn contagiousness, researchers have offered different reasons as to why it exists. Some have proposed that in early humans, yawn contagiousness might have helped people communicate their alertness levels to each other, and thus coordinate their sleep schedules.

This might be part of a more general phenomenon of unconscious signals that serve to synchronize group behavior, the authors of the Neuroimage paper wrote. “Such synchronization could be essential for species survival and works without action understanding, like when a flock of birds rises to the air as soon as the first bird does so—supposably as it notices a predator.”

Answer 4

The answer is, no one really knows why yawning is "contagious". Or why we yawn at all. One popular explanation is that yawning allows you to get rid of too much carbon dioxide in your system and increase your oxygen supply. This was disproved by Dr. Robert Provine and his research team in 1987.

Now scientists are wondering if yawning is from our deep past -- part of our evolutionary history. Did a yawn signal to the group that it was time for everyone to retire to the trees and snooze? Did a yawn signal that we were all feeling cozy and warm about each other? Did a yawn signal something more like, "Gee, I know how you're feeling, I feel that way too."

Between 40 and 60 percent of the population seems to find yawning contagious. Researchers at the State University of New York conducted a series of yawning experiments. They determined that being self-aware (the ability to recognize oneself) and having the ability to see things from someone else's viewpoint means a person is more likely to find yawning contagious.

Now you're thinking, what humans are not self-aware? Schizophrenics sometimes have trouble with self-recognition so they will not find yawning contagious. Babies won't yawn contagiously until they're more than a year old.

Some birds and reptiles yawn. Most mammals yawn. My dog yawns, but that doesn't make me yawn -- I obviously cannot put myself in her paw prints. (But who can empathize with a creature that sleeps all day, then when she does bother to get up and join you on a walk, suddenly bolts after a squirrel and nearly tears your arm out of your socket? I have no idea what's going on in that dog's mind.)

Chimpanzees yawn too, and in fact, if they watch other chimps yawn, they're more likely to yawn too.

So, I guess the real answer is: who knows?

Answer 5

one theory is that it evolved so that monkeys etc would all get tired and go to sleep when a large enough number of them got tired (this apparently had some evolutionary advantage). it's just stayed with us through the ages, and we yawn when others yawn.

Answer 6

Its your mind thinking that you want to sleep so it makes you yawn because your looking at some on else doing it ;) its easy to figure out

Answer 7

the clarification we yawn is with the help of the fact our respiratory slows inflicting a loss of oxygen and so we yawn to take up a deep breath, it relatively is why we yawn as quickly as we are drained-our respiratory slows down. And as quickly as we see somebody else yawn our respiratory slows down slightly back so we yawn :)

Answer 8

u feel lazy when the person in front of u yawns

Answer 9

its a state of mind that mimics the actions of others, just like when you see other people look at you, the initial reaction would always be to look at him/her also even for a tenth of a second..

Answer 10

Matter over mind.