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Why yawning is contagious

London: Psychologists have shown that a phenomenon called “contagious yawning” is strongest in people who are more empathetic and have a more developed sense of social awareness.

Researchers at the University of Leeds covertly watched 40 psychology students and 40 engineering students yawning contagiously.

The students thought they were merely sitting in a waiting room before an experiment, but in reality their reactions were being observed while someone else in the room yawned 10 times.

On average, the engineering students yawned 1.5 times in response, while the psychology students yawned 5.5 times. The two groups also differed in how well developed their “theory of mind” was — that is, their ability to appreciate the mental state of others.

Catriona Morrison’s team tested this using an exercise in which subjects identify a person’s emotional state by looking at an image of their eyes with the rest of the face obscured. The psychology students scored two points better than the engineering students on a 40-point scale — a small but statistically significant difference.

“They have got a more highly developed social awareness,” said Dr. Morrison. The research backs up the idea that contagious yawning is a display of empathy, she added.

It also ties in with a study released last month which showed that autistic children were less prone to contagious yawning than children developing normally. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2007

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