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you open without it costing you a thing! Have you ever found yourself copying what
your friend does? Psychologists call this mimicry and mirroring. It’s actually quite common to unconsciously
imitate how another person talks, how they sit and stand, their gestures, or how they
make eye contact. One thing that is perhaps more confusing,
and something we might occasionally catch ourselves doing, is copying someone else’s
accent at times. You’ve never even been to Scotland, but
on talking to a scotsman, you find bits of Scottish threaded into your own accent. Apparently accent mimicking is very common,
and if you are musically inclined, we are told you are more prone to it because of your
brain's musical plasticity. But today we are going to talk about something
a little different in the realm of “unintentional mirroring”, in this episode of the Infographics
Show, Why do We Yawn When Others Yawn? Don’t forget to subscribe and click the
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We should first explain why we yawn at all. Everyone does it, from babies to old folks
to cats and dogs and some say fish – but that’s apparently a different kind of yawn. We yawn because we are tired, or perhaps because
we are bored, or feeling awkward or anxious. But why that sometimes silent, sometimes loud
roar? Why don’t we just blink our eyes instead? Well, as mind boggling as this may sound,
we don’t actually know exactly why we yawn, but there are plenty of theories out there. According to a 2014 study undertaken by Princeton
University’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, yawning is just a way of regulating
your brain’s temperature. We yawn more during certain seasons, according
to the study. When your brain gets too hot, you yawn to
cool it down as cold air enters your mouth, so we yawn a lot more in summer when we are
hot.
Still, this theory is a contentious topic
among what we might call yawn experts. It also doesn’t exactly explain why we yawn
when we are tired or bored at looking at yet another family photo album featuring another
trip to Disneyland. Unless, some scientists say, the brain gets
hot in these situations due to stress and we yawn to cool it down. So, another theory says that when we are tired,
our breathing slows down and our bodies receive less oxygen. We yawn to get a good old shot of the stuff,
and release some carbon dioxide, apparently. The same goes for when we are bored, but that
doesn’t explain why we might yawn during a conversation when it seems we are not slowing
down. Another theory says that when we are yawning,
we are just having a good stretch.
We are flexing muscles and joints and moving
blood around to stay focused during, say, a two hour lecture on the principles of accounting
in the early 20th century. The same might happen when listening to another
one of your teacher’s supposedly amusing anecdotes. This theory has also been disproven, as when
scientists gave people more oxygen or removed carbon dioxide, it did not affect the number
of times people yawned. There is another theory that you might think
is a little out there, but it seems to make sense when we think of animals or early Homo
sapiens. Our ancestors would yawn to bare their teeth,
and this meant ‘Hey dude, let’s do something different, I’m kinda bored of this.” It signaled the need for a change.
That would basically be saying that when you
yawn, you are saying, “Stop, change” and then when your friend yawns back, he is saying,
“No, you stop, change.” In any case, some people think yawning is
a way of communicating a message along the lines of: ‘something is a little bit unpleasant’,
but ‘not a great threat’. This doesn’t explain why athletes might
yawn right before a race. This seems related to nerves, similar to the
awkward or anxious yawn.
Dr. Robert Provine from the University of
Maryland was asked about this and he said it’s still a mystery somewhat, and he has
studied yawning for more than 30 years. Provine has said the obvious in that yawning
signifies changes in states, “sleep to wakefulness, wakefulness to sleep, arousal to de-arousal,
or vice versa,” and so to some extent it is a kind of out with the old, in with the
new. He said it’s also a kind of stress reduction,
but admitted more studies need to be done. Ok, so we are full of theories now, but still
lacking a definitive answer as to why we yawn. Let’s now make this even more confusing
and ask why we yawn contagiously, i.e. when others yawn in front of us, or even on the
TV, we copy that. It’s said that while most animals yawn,
the only living things to yawn contagiously are humans, chimpanzees…and dogs.
The New York Times has written about the very
serious topic of canines catching yawns, and indeed, it seems our beloved friends copy
us when we yawn. The yawns are genuine, too, as the mutts in
one study were hooked up to monitors to check signs of real yawning versus just mimicking
mouth movements. Why do humans do it? Some studies hypothesized that the reason
we copy yawns is because we are showing empathy. The Smithsonian writes, “The less empathetic
someone is, the less likely they are to yawn back.” So, there you go. When someone yawns back at you, you are looking
at an understanding kind of person. Kudos to the mirror yawners. According to the same study, psychopaths are
very unlikely to catch your yawn. Perhaps if you want to find out if your new
friend is a budding Ted Bundy, you should practice yawning in front of him and see what
response you get. This was a serious study, too. But it also said that people you know better
are more likely to catch a yawn than total strangers. Maybe now you could use yawning as a kind
of empath-ometer with your friends and family.
Ok, we are getting carried away. Contagious yawning is what we call an “echophenomenon”
which is described as “automatic imitative actions without explicit awareness.” There is also “echolalia” (imitation of
words) and “echopraxia” (imitation of actions). But now we are back at the beginning. One thing one study in the UK came up with
after various experiments was that by trying to stifle a yawn, you actually yawn more. A professor of cognitive neuropsychology at
the University of Nottingham in England said that yawning was connected to the brain’s
motor cortex, so if there’s a lot going on in there, you are likely to yawn. Could this be related to contagious yawning? Perhaps, if the brain is subconsciously fighting
yawning. That’s still not a very good explanation,
is it? A study at Duke University refutes what other
studies hypothesized and that was that yawning was related to empathy. The paper, called, “Individual Variation
in Contagious Yawning Susceptibility Is Highly Stable and Largely Unexplained by Empathy
or Other Known Factors,” said that yawning could somehow help us understand schizophrenia
and autism. Still, no definitive answers were given to
us yawners. It did say that some people are more susceptible
than others to contagious yawning.
When people watched a three minute clip of
people yawning, they yawned anywhere from 0 to 15 times. 222 people contagiously yawned at least once. The one significant conclusion they came to
was that the older you get, the less likely you are to catch a yawn. At the moment, contagious yawning remains
one of the many mysteries in the world. If empathy is out the window, no one has any
idea why we do it.
Unless of course we are just snarling at each
other! Are you feeling like you want to give something
charitable to others that is not a yawn? Check this out: Tab for a Cause is a browser
extension that donates to charity each time you open a new tab, without costing you a
thing! Just by browsing the web, Tabbers have now
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to get started. They now have a brand new page that is faster,
beautiful, and even more charitable! Do you have any ideas about why we yawn? And why we yawn when others yawn? Let us know in the comments! Also, be sure to check out our other video
called What if Earth was made out of Lego! Thanks for watching, and, as always, don’t
forget to like, share, and subscribe. See you next time!.
