Yaaaawwwwwnnnn – is it genetic?
December 16, 2011 in OFFBEAT by Suzanne Elvidge
Yawning is contagious, especially around the dinner table after a particularly large Christmas lunch. I’m even yawning just thinking about it. Yawns seem to be particularly easily passed around the family – so is it genetic?
Well, not quite. According to Italian research published in PLoS One, it has more to do with empathy and the degree of closeness to the people around you. According to the research, yawns are the most contagious with relations, then friends, then acquaintances, and then lastly strangers. There doesn’t seem to be a difference based on gender or nationality.
Very young children and children with autism don’t yawn contagiously, according to research published in Child Development in 2010, perhaps because empathy and mimicry have not developed. However, dogs can catch yawns, which may suggest that we have selected empathy as a trait during centuries of breeding. Chimpanzees also find yawns are more catching when it’s group members compared with non-group members.
So remember – when your brother yawns when you are talking to him over the turkey this Christmas, it’s not because he is bored, it just shows how fond he is of you. Or he’s a chimpanzee. You choose.
Norscia, I., & Palagi, E. (2011). Yawn Contagion and Empathy in Homo sapiens PLoS ONE, 6 (12) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0028472
Campbell, M., & de Waal, F. (2011). Ingroup-Outgroup Bias in Contagious Yawning by Chimpanzees Supports Link to Empathy PLoS ONE, 6 (4) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0018283
Helt, M., Eigsti, I., Snyder, P., & Fein, D. (2010). Contagious Yawning in Autistic and Typical Development Child Development, 81 (5), 1620-1631 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01495.x
Joly-Mascheroni, R., Senju, A., & Shepherd, A. (2008). Dogs catch human yawns Biology Letters, 4 (5), 446-448 DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2008.0333
