Yawning question?

Question

I know this has been asked before but: Why is yawning contagious? I see someone else yawn, then I yawn, too. Why?

Answer 1

I think it's a natural process. If we see somebody laughing we feel like laughing, same in the case of weeping, crying ,different moods and yawning too.

Answer 2

Humans yawn when they see someone else yawn, read about yawning, think about yawning, or even just hear yawning. I can barely keep my hands on the keyboard because once I yawn, I tend to stretch and then rub my face.

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.)

Answer 3

The funniest explanation I have heard about yawning being contagious relates to yawning's function to equalize pressure across the eardrums.

You know how you have to "pop" your ears when you go up or down a mountain, well yawning does that too.

So when you yawn, you equalize the pressure across your eardrums and you feel better.

However, because of this, the person next to you now has to equalize the pressure in their ear drums. So therefore they yawn. And so on.

...

Now, in reality nobody knows why yawning is contagious. We don't even know why we yawn. Have a look at some of the stuff in the wiki page.

Answer 4

See Sam Sam Bubble above -- her third paragraph. On point.

This is approaching the actuality of it -- aside from all this hubub of scientific littany.

Everyone prefers to be kept off the edge of it... And nature does have its signals and affords us these, say, respites, which are as much a part of our beingness as is seeing or hearing or having hunger. We are sentient beings, not automatons.