When a Yawn is More than Just a Yawn

Imagine sitting around with your friends, talking about the most recent good movie you all saw together. All of a sudden, a friend next to you lets out a big yawn…and then a second later you inevitably do too. I’m sure we have all had that experience at some point, and studies have been conducted regarding this topic to understand the reason why. What they found, interestingly, is that a yawn can be a measure of empathy and actually says a lot about your relationship.

The way our bodies relate to one another gives insight into the way in which our minds relate to one another as well. In general, our bodies unconsciously mimic the nonverbal behavior of those with whom we interact, and the degree to which this occurs depends on our relationship to them. The more empathetic we are and the better/closer our relationship is, the more mimicking occurs.

According to a study conducted recently by Ivan Norscia and Elizabetta Palagi that was published in the journal PLoSONE has shown that more contagious yawners—that inevitable phenomenon that occurs as a result of seeing, hearing, or even reading about another yawn—have more dispositional empathy. This means that they tend to be better and more interested in understanding people’s thoughts and feelings. Evidence for this is also seen in children: contagious yawning seems to develop in around the time when they also develop cognitive capacities; children with autism, however, have a deficit in this ability and thus do not seem to “catch” yawns as often.

In order to explore the correlation between psychological closeness and yawning, Norscia and Palagi conducted their study by observing the yawns of 109 adults in their natural environments over the course of a year. Each time the subject yawned, the researchers recorded a myriad of factors: the time of yawn, identity of the yawner, the identities of all the people who could see or hear the yawner (such as strangers, acquaintances, friends, or kin), the frequency of the yawns by those people 3 minutes after the original yawn, and the time between those yawns and the original one. Additionally, the position of the observers relative to the yawner (able to see versus only hearing the yawn), the individuals’ gender, nationality, and social context were recorded in order to rule out alternative explanations for the contagion yawn.

Just as the researchers expected, the degree of emotional closeness predicted whether or not the contagious yawn occurred. Family members had the greatest contagion (according to occurrence and frequency), and strangers and acquaintances showed longer delays in the response compared to friends and kin. Of all of the other variables the researchers looked at, none of them predicted yawn contagion. This indicates that the unconscious, inevitable contagious yawn actually hints at meaningful information about our relationship with others.

The phenomenon of having more empathy toward people with whom you have close relationships is further explained by a study mentioned in Dr. Jean Decety’s talk. In the study titled “Love Hurts: an fMRI study,” participants were primed by being shown pictures of themselves, a loved one, or a stranger. They were then shown animated stimuli that were either potentially painful or non-painful. fMRI data showed that when participants were shown a loved one and potentially painful stimuli, there was only slightly less activation of neural network involved in pain processing (the anterior cingulated cortex and the insula) than if the participant was shown a picture of themselves and a painful stimulus. The closer the relationship to the participant, the greater the activation in those areas, the more empathy the participant feels for that person. In the case of Norscia and Palagi’s study, the next correlation would be that the more empathy the participant feels for the person, the more likely the contagious yawn will occur.

So, next time you’re sitting with a group of friends and you yawn, look around to see who “catches” it. It could tell you who your closest friends really are.*

Cheng, Yawei, Chenyi Chen, Ching-Po Lin, Kun-Hsien Chou, and Jean Decety. "Love Hurts: An

fMRI Study." NeuroImage 51.2 (2010): 923-29. PubMed. Web. 11 Dec. 2012.

Valdesolo, Piercarlo. "What a Yawn Says about Your Relationship." Scientific American (2012):

n. pag. 31 Jan. 2012. Web. 09 Dec. 2012.

*Disclaimer: This is in no way suggesting that if your best friend does not yawn after you do that they’re secretly not your best friend.