When a friend yawns, women feel urge to yawn too, study says

By Los Angeles Times, Adapted by Newsela staff

02.11.16

If a person yawns, some people will yawn back. Women do this more often than men. Scientists from Italy made this claim recently in a science magazine. They did tests to find out if people can catch the urge to yawn.  

A yawn is involuntary. A person does not mean to do it. It happens by opening the mouth, breathing in, expanding a tube that leads to the eardrums, and then exhaling. The whole event takes about six seconds. 

Catching yawns is an example of a social contagion. A social contagion is when information, ideas or behaviors are spread from person to person. It spreads almost like a cold does. A person who sees a friend yawn might also yawn, even if he or she is not tired. A person may also yawn if they hear, see, read about, or even think about yawning.

It Starts In Childhood

Scientists connect contagious yawning to empathy. When a person is empathic, they can sense other people’s feelings. They may even feel the way the other person does. Contagious yawning seems to start when children are 4 or 5 years old, about the same time children start to develop empathy. In old age it falls off, along with empathy.

Scientists looked at why contagious yawning is related to empathy. They say it uses the same neural network. A neural network is a system of cells that send messages to the brain, spine and nerves. Contagious yawning also happens more with friends and family than with strangers.

People are not the only ones who catch yawns from others. Chimpanzees, bonobos, dogs, wolves and other animals do also. Contagious yawning can even spread between animals and humans. Scientists have found that chimpanzees and dogs both catch human yawns.

Strangers Get No Reaction

Science also suggests that women have more empathy than men do. Scientists connect more empathy to more contagious yawning. They say that if women are more empathic than men, then they must catch more yawns, too.

To find out, the Italian scientists took a closer look. They observed people at work, eating dinner and at other places. Over five years, they recorded almost 1,500 cases of yawning. The scientists watched 92 pairs of people who passed a yawn at least three times.

They found no difference between men and women in ordinary yawning. However, women did catch yawns much more often than men did. Scientists also found that both men and women yawned when friends and family yawned. Neither one yawned very often when people that they did not know well yawned.  

Scientists say the fact that women have more empathy could affect more than just social yawning. It could make them better parents, better at communicating, and better at living in groups. Greater empathy may also allow women to have relationships that last longer.

Vocabulary:

a. empathy 

b. urge

b. contagion 

d. involuntary

- the communication of disease from one person to another by close contact (                     )

- the ability to understand and share the feelings of another           (                         )

- done without will or conscious control (                        )

- a strong desire or impulse (                         )

Questions:

1. What was the claim that the scientists from Italy made?

2. What is the process of a yawn?

3. What cause people to yawn?

4. Why women are more contagious to yawn?

5. In your opinion, how does a good sleep affect a person's daily routine?

Grade Level 5