Why Is Yawning Contagious? Is It Just a Behavior or Is There Science Behind It?

Whenever there are a few people around and someone yawns, most people have experienced also yawning afterward. As such, could there be an explanation as to why people yawn after one another based on science or is it purely behavioral?

Why People Yawn

According to USA Today, the daily average yawns of an adult is around 20 per day and while often associated with being tired, there's a deeper meaning to why people yawn. This occurrence happens mostly during a shift in activity like when transitioning from sleeping to walking.

State change is often the reason why people yawn, especially during the state after sleep, but researchers show that this activity is actually done to promote alertness. The Sleep Foundation reports that yawning upon waking up actually cools the brain down.

As noted by MUSC Health, yawning is considered a reflex that helps people feel relaxed afterward. However, there are still many theories as to exactly why people yawn, leading to the conclusion that it could be for multiple reasons.

Unique causes of yawning include when someone's on an airplane and either voluntarily or involuntarily yawns to try to equalize ear pressure. The more widely logically accepted but also disproven theory is that people yawn to remove carbon dioxide and improve blood oxygen.

Why Is Yawning Contagious

An even more important question is this: why is yawning contagious. Just like the reason behind why people yawn, there are different hypotheses as to why, with one of them being echopraxia, which is the social aspect behind it.

This means if someone sees a behavior and feel sensitive toward it, they will end up mimicing it. According to APA, this is possibly due to the brain's mirror neurons, which often leads to people trying to copy what they see.

A report by Science highlights how contagious yawning could actually be a type of increased vigilance, due to its ability to increase awareness. This is because whenever people yawn, they suddenly pay more attention to their physiological state.

This means it's possible for someone to be tired but not actually feel it until he suddenly yawns, which triggers the feeling. Interestingly, it was also found that women were more prone to yawn due to its contagiousness.

Women Yawn More

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the University of Pisa's Elisabetta Palagi was the lead author in a study that found how women were more responsive to yawning compared to men. This was because of how women were more susceptible.

Palagi highlighted that women weren't afraid of yawning in response to other people. The five-year study involved the secret observation of over 100 friends and acquaintances over different circumstances like the workplace, dinner, or even on trains.

Palagi even had data on her husband and found that people were also more likely to yawn in response to someone yawning close to them. The research also showed how most women were more empathetic compared to men.

She then highlighted how yawning was rooted in empathy.