• Question: Why do people yawn, and how come if someone else yawns most of the people around them do?

    Asked by winston24 to Kate on 10 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Kate Salmon

      Kate Salmon answered on 10 Mar 2014:

      Hi @Winston24, this is a good question. Basically, scientists still don’t understand why we yawn when other people do… there are a number of theories which include:

      1. We do it to empathise with other people. So this is the ability to understand what the other person is feeling and if they yawn, we yawn too to let them know that we understand how they feel. This could date back to when early humans wanted to let each other know so they could all go to bed at the same time.

      2. It could be a learning behaviour. So when we watch someone do something that we need to learn ourselves such as knitting or playing football, then we mimic them. Yawning could work the same way. When we see someone yawn, we learnt to do it too.

      So again we don’t know and more research needs to be done on it- but you can find out more here: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/why-is-yawning-contagious-claudia-aguirre.

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