why is it so that when one yawns the person next to him also yawns?

Answer 1

Researchers aren't completely sure. They believe it is an evolutionary, primitive construct, a way of communicating boredom to others. Contagious yawning is seen as a person's way of empathizing, seeing things from the other person's point of view. Steven Platek, Ph.D. and a team of researchers from the Department of Psychology at the State University of New York (Albany, NY) investigated contagious yawns with a series of experiments. Their data suggest that being aware of one's own mental state ("self-recognition") and the ability to see things from another person's point of view ("mental state attribution") may make people susceptible to contagious yawns.

Answer 2

The yawn reflex is often described as contagious: if one person yawns, this will cause another person to "sympathetically" yawn.Mythbusters attempted an experiment documenting this effect in episode 2.28, "Is Yawning Contagious?", with a conclusion of partly confirmed.

The proximate cause for contagious yawning may lie with mirror neurons, i.e. neurons in the frontal cortex of certain vertebrates, which upon being exposed to a stimulus from conspecific (same species) and occasionally interspecific organisms, activates the same regions in the brain. Mirror neurons have been proposed as a driving force for imitation which lies at the root of much human learning, e.g. language acquisition. Yawning may be an offshoot of the same imitative impulse.

At a distal level (in terms of evolutionary advantage), yawning might be a herd instinct.Other theories suggest that the yawn serves to synchronize mood behavior among gregarious animals, similar to the howling of the wolf pack during a full moon. It signals tiredness to other members of the group in order to synchronize sleeping patterns and periods of activity. It can serve as a warning in displaying large, canine teeth.

This phenomenon has been observed among various primates. The threat gesture is a way of maintaining order in the primates' social structure. The contagion of yawning is interspecific, for example a human yawning in front of a pet dog can incite the dog to yawn as well. Oddly, sometimes sympathetic yawning may be caused by simply looking at a picture of a person or animal yawning, or even seeing the word yawn..

Answer 3

Yawning is a reflex activity. This happens when the brain senses that the amount of oxygen in the blood as well as the number of breaths have fallen. This triggers a sensation to fill the lungs which in effect should increase the blood oxygen levels.
We tend to take shallow breaths when we have prolonged periods of inactivity. This is typical of when we are sleepy or bored.
The theory that yawning is contagious: spreads from person to person has been suggested to be a consequence of low room oxygen levels. However it is more likely that you are yawning because you are sleepy or bored and have been in a prolonged state of inactivity. In such a case it is highly likely that the person sitting next to you feels exactly the same way and your yawning was a subconscous stimulation for his body to trigger a yawn.

Answer 4

Reading your question made me yawn! No joke! Just thinking about yawning makes me yawn... Sorry, gotta get a coffee....

Answer 5

it's basically a stimulation of the brain, when you you pick out some kind of food and say "oh that looks good" the perosn next to you will do the same, " monkey see monkey do" it's not to common though but it doesn happen because when you do something showing that you are tired the person next to you will do the same, it's just that his/her brian is making sure to have him/herself release the exhuasted air to be safe as well.

Answer 6

Purely psychological. Sympathetic vibrations.

Answer 7

it is a kind of amorphous resonance, a kind of sympathetic reaction!

Answer 8

echo

Answer 9

I think u are incorrect. I dont feel so..............