Why do other people yawn?

Question

Why is it that when a person yawns, someone else who may be standing around yawns as well? Is there any scientific reasaoning to it?

Answer 1

Compounding the mystery is the odd way in which the contagious power of yawning 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.

Interestingly, researchers recently found that yawning isn’t only catching among people; it is also among chimpanzees!

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

Mirror neurons play a part as the other answerer said. It is an empathetic reaction and it is has been found that psychopaths don't yawn when they see it because they lack empathy which is what allows them to do the things they do. Very interesting.

Answer 4

i don't know. i've always wondered that myself and . . . just talking about yawning is making me want to yawn! that is so weird.

Answer 5

I find it is the lack of intake of oxygen to the brain,yes I believe it is symatic

Answer 6

it is a the mind sensors that detect it, and they begin to follow the other person