What does it mean when someone yawns when they talk to you?
The phenomenon was least common among strangers, the journal PLoS ONE reports. The University of Pisa team concluded that contagious yawning is driven by how emotionally close we are to someone and so how likely we are to empathise with them. They say there are other reasons to link yawning with empathy.
It may be triggered by fatigue, boredom, stress, or seeing someone else yawn. Because it's a reflex, yawning involves an interplay of neurotransmitters associated with tiredness, appetite, tension, and emotions.
Yawning is contagious, as everybody knows. A new study shows that “yawn transmission” is more frequent, and faster, between people sharing an emotional bond: close friends, kin, and mates.
Excessive yawning may mean that you are tired, drowsy, or fatigued. However, it can also be a sign of a medical condition, such as sleep apnea, narcolepsy, or a reaction to a medication.
We've always heard that yawning was contagious, but apparently is even more contagious between people who love each other. According to a study by Italian researchers if you yawn and your partner yawns as well, they love you.
At its most fundamental, a yawn is a form of communication—one of the most basic mechanisms we have for making ourselves understood to others without words. “It's often said that behavior doesn't leave fossils,” Provine says. “But, with yawning, you are looking at a behavioral fossil.
Empathy was measured using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. Although subjects imitated all facial expressions to large extents, our studies show that only contagious yawning was related to empathy. Subjects who yawned in response to observing others yawn exhibited higher empathy values by half a standard deviation.
Anxiety. Anxiety is a common trigger for yawning. Anxiety affects the heart, respiratory system, and energy levels. These can all cause breathlessness, yawning, and feelings of stress.
Physical Causes—Fatigue, general tiredness, body temperature malfunctions, and stimulation of the vagus nerve can cause frequent yawning. Excessive yawning and sleep disorders are often correlated. Emotional Causes—Anxiety and depression can lead to yawning excessively.
- You care about each other's needs and desires. ...
- You share openly. ...
- You don't just hear each other; you really listen. ...
- You know each other deeply. ...
- You're interested in each other's hobbies, even if you don't "get" it. ...
- It's all about the little details. ...
- It's a judgment-free zone.
Is yawning a form of bonding?
Studies have shown correlations between contagious yawning and closeness in relationships and research suggests women, who tend to score higher on empathy tests, may be more susceptible than men. So the dominant theory is that contagious yawning facilitates empathy and social bonding. The question is how, and why.
Although not fully understood, yawning appears to be not only a sign of tiredness but also a much more general sign of changing conditions within the body. Studies have shown that we yawn when we are fatigued, as well as when we are awakening, and during other times when the state of alertness is changing.
You may have seen this happen before. One person yawns and others around them do the same. This is because of mirror neurons in our brain that help us empathize. People who have narcissistic traits often do not yawn in response because they are unaware of someone else's state or needs.
Both individuals with diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and individuals high in psychopathic traits show reduced susceptibility to contagious yawning; that is, yawning after seeing or hearing another person yawn.
Contagious yawning has been linked to empathy. Psychopaths lack empathy for others as a general rule. A study in 2015 found that scoring highly on a checklist for psychopathy was associated with a lower chance of catching yawns. It's not necessarily a determining factor, but it could be a symptom.
- Feeling nervous, restless or tense.
- Having a sense of impending danger, panic or doom.
- Having an increased heart rate.
- Breathing rapidly (hyperventilation)
- Sweating.
- Trembling.
- Feeling weak or tired.
- Trouble concentrating or thinking about anything other than the present worry.
When you have chemistry with someone, you don't need to force anything — including awkward small talk. You can sit together in silence and not feel weird about it. “Instead, you may feel a sense of comfort knowing they're with you, no matter what you're doing,” Hafeez says.
When you feel a soul tie, it's simply the sense that another soul is in your life for a reason. For example, if your life is very busy yet you meet a new potential friend or potential business partner, the sense that you have a soul tie to this person could inspire you to make room in your life for the relationship.
It may be hard to suppress that yawn—they are contagious, after all—but leaving your mouth uncovered is undeniably rude. "Yawning is a sign that you're tired, so it is polite to cover your mouth and even apologize for yawning while talking to someone," says Chertoff.
In humans, yawning is a socially modulated response because it can be inhibited by actual—and not virtual—social presence (Gallup et al., 2019) and because a yawn can be triggered by someone else's yawn, as a result of a phenomenon known as contagious yawning (Provine, 1989, 2005).
Why do people yawn when others do?
Taken together, experts believe that contagious yawning may be a social communication tool specific to higher-order animals. In the context of the brain-cooling theory of yawning, perhaps yawning evolved to become contagious as a means to increase the cognitive performance and vigilance of people within a group.
Although subjects imitated all facial expressions to large extents, our studies show that only contagious yawning was related to empathy. Subjects who yawned in response to observing others yawn exhibited higher empathy values by half a standard deviation.
It also may have evolved to increase vigilance within a group. The basic rationale is that if yawning is an indicator that one individual is experiencing diminished arousal, then seeing another person yawn might, in turn, increase the observer's vigilance to compensate for the low vigilance of the yawner.
People who have narcissistic traits often do not yawn in response because they are unaware of someone else's state or needs.
It may be hard to suppress that yawn—they are contagious, after all—but leaving your mouth uncovered is undeniably rude. "Yawning is a sign that you're tired, so it is polite to cover your mouth and even apologize for yawning while talking to someone," says Chertoff.
When you feel ill at ease and inhibited in someone's company you do not yawn. We associate yawning so closely with feeling at our ease that we all occasionally, when we find ourselves in awkward company, put on a fake yawn in order to signal that we are really at our ease. This is never a good idea.
Contagious yawning occurs when observing another individual yawn induces yawning in the observer [20]. The contagious yawning–empathy hypothesis posits that both contagious yawning and empathy are mediated by the same perception–action mechanism [1,6,21–23].
Contagious yawning is triggered involuntarily when we observe another person yawn -- it is a common form of echophenomena -- the automatic imitation of another's words (echolalia) or actions (echopraxia). And it's not just humans who have a propensity for contagious yawning -- chimpanzees and dogs do it too.
