The act of yawning is often associated with drowsiness and boredom. A lack of sleep or interest often triggers an involuntary opening of the mouth with a long, deep inspiration and slow expiration. When we are exposed to constant uninteresting stimuli or are simply tired from a lack of sleep from the night before, our body utilizes yawning as a response in order to increase our arousal level and sharpen our cognition and attention. This is something that many of us know, but the bigger mystery is why many people yawn when they see someone else yawn. An article that was published in the PLOS One journal discussed the relationship between the contagiousness of yawning and empathy in humans. We as humans enjoy sharing emotions, having conversations, and engaging in social interactions. Because of these, we gain trust and develop relationships with the people that we care about the most. The social-emotional bond that humans develop along with the characteristic of empathy bonds people together. Therefore, the contagiousness of yawning can be linked to the relationships that we create with the people around us. In this article, the researchers found that “there is an empathic gradient increasing from strangers to kin-related individuals”, meaning that people are more likely to yawn when they feel like they have a deep bond with someone. So, if you want to know if someone cares about you, you should have a conversation with them, yawn, and then look to see if they yawn as well. If they do not yawn back, I am sorry to say that there is probably not a connection there.
Gupta, S., & Mittal, S. (2013). Yawning and its physiological significance. International journal of applied & basic medical research. Retrieved October 22, 2022, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3678674/
Norscia, I., & Palagi, E. (2011). Yawn Contagion and Empathy in Homo sapiens. PLoS ONE, 6(12), 1-5. https://doi-org.dml.regis.edu/10.1371/journal.pone.0028472
Kaitlin,
ReplyDeleteThis is a very clever post, I would never think of writing about this, but when I saw the title I wanted to learn more about what you found. It is interesting that you found it is basically about social interactions and emotional bonds. I dove deeper into this idea of social acts, and I found a few similar theories around; the attention bias hypothesis (ABH), emotional bias hypothesis (EBH), and selective visual attention bias (SVA) (Norscia 2020). Now I found this study that was looking to see if the visual attentional bias explained the yawning or do you need both the visual and auditory part (Norscia 2020). In this study, they looked at the social bond significance, so they tested strangers to family members and found that using only the auditory yawn was most contagious between friends and family (Norscia 2020). The visual attention bias was contagious the most when paired with auditory independent of strangers or family (Norscia 2020). Overall what I found mimics what you found in the idea that there is definitely an emotional bias (Norscia 2020).
Norscia, I., Zanoli, A., Gamba, M., & Palagi, E. (2020). Auditory Contagious Yawning Is Highest Between Friends and Family Members: Support to the Emotional Bias Hypothesis. Frontiers in psychology, 11, 442. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00442
Hey Kaitlin, this article was super interesting for several reasons. I had no idea that yawns were even beneficial, I thought they were similar to a hiccup which is just a sudden contraction. I also thought it was interesting that yawns increase arousal level, I can't say that I feel more awake after a yawn but maybe I am too tired to realize. Although yawning can be considered a bonding moment, it made me wonder if its possible to stop a yawn when its inappropriate. For example during an important meeting when you don't want to convey that you are tired/bored. After some research, it seems that yawns, similar to sneezes, cannot be stopped. There are some breathing techniques that may help, but there are only indirect techniques to reduce yawning overall instead of stopping a single yawn. From personal experience, you can always disguise a yawn as an almost-sneeze by burying your face in your elbow.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3678674/
https://www.healthline.com/health/yawning-excessive#treatment