why are yawns contagious?
361765
Not really sure---but just seeing the word yawn made me yawn--Thanks alot---yawns again---wonders about yawns--yawns again-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yawn Why are yawns contagious? Getting kind of tired-- http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_309.html-- Why do we yawn? http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/yawning.html A yawn reasearcher? http://psychology.drexel.edu/ECNL/  Huh? Sorry must be groggy--Pictures of animals yawning --Oh No-- yawning out of control-- http://www.animalyawns.com/ all this reading about yawning ---YAWNS deeply--- I'm getting so sleepy ---  It's hard to keep my eyes open--z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z
85551
I think this deserves to be a featured question.  Here are a few theories and a link below:\n\nEverybody yawns - from unborn babies to the oldest great-grandparent. Animals do it, too. But why, exactly, do people and animals yawn? No one knows for sure. But there are many theories (ideas) about why people yawn. \n\nOne is that when we are bored or tired, we just don't breathe as deeply as we usually do. As this theory goes, our bodies take in less oxygen because our breathing has slowed. Therefore, yawning helps us bring more oxygen into the blood and move more carbon dioxide out of the blood.\n\nYawning, then, would be an involuntary reflex (something we can't really control) to help us control our oxygen and carbon dioxide levels. Sounds good, but other studies have shown that breathing more oxygen does not decrease yawning. Likewise, breathing more carbon dioxide does not increase yawning. Hmmm. Now what?\n\nAnother theory is that yawning stretches the lungs and lung tissue. Stretching and yawning may be a way to flex muscles and joints, increase heart rate, and feel more awake.\n\nOther people believe that yawning is a protective reflex to redistribute the oil-like substance called surfactant (say: sur-fak-tunt) that helps keep lungs lubricated inside and keeps them from collapsing. So, if we didn't yawn, according to this theory, taking a deep breath would become harder and harder - and that would not be good!\n\nBut there is one idea about yawning that everyone knows to be true. It seems contagious. If you yawn in class, you'll probably notice a few other people will start yawning, too. Even thinking about yawning can get you yawning. How many times have you yawned while reading this article? We hope not many!
441827
See the article in the site below.  It tells you why we yawn and gives evidence to support the theory that yawning is "contagious" because "as social creatures we are highly inclined to copy one another."\n\nThe article starts by saying that a good trick to see if anyone is checking you out is to yawn and see if anyone else yawns back!  \n\nHope this helps...
262175
science are baffled why yawning is contagious. They have none whatsoever for explaining this phenomena. However psychologies insists it is psychological.
462731
Cover your mouth if you want to, but it won't keep the next guy from "catching" your yawn.\nContagious yawning is real, scientists say, and it's "probably programmed into us," according to Dr. William Broughton, director of the Sleep Disorders Center at the University of South Alabama Knollwood Hospital.\n\nThe action of a mouth opening is not what compels others to yawn, Broughton said. Studies have demonstrated that showing someone a photo of a wide-open mouth does not induce a yawn.\n\nConversely, holding a hand over the mouth while yawning doesn't prevent it from being contagious, Broughton said.\n\nContagious yawns appear "basically to be a visual response," Broughton said.\n\nBetween 40 and 60 percent of people who watch videos or hear talk about yawning also end up doing the deed, according to Nature News Service.\n\nResearchers from the State University of New York in Albany tested people to find out why some are susceptible to contagious yawning and deduced that self-aware or empathetic people are more likely to catch yawns, according to the news service.\n\n"Identifying with another's state of mind while they yawn may trigger an unconscious impersonation....The findings also explain why schizophrenics, who have particular difficulty in doing this, rarely catch yawns," Nature News Service reported.\n\nBroughton said contagious yawning may be a social phenomenon, allowing groups of humans to coordinate their times of sleep.\n\nRonald Baenninger, a professor in the psychology department at Temple University in Pennsylvania, has studied yawning and said that the contagiousness is the part we know the least about.\n\nOne hypothesis is that the phenomenon came about when ancestral humans lived in troops, and it was important for them to wake up at the same time. Yawning may have been a way for them to communicate the level of alertness among different group members, Baenninger said.\n\nToday, contagious yawning is just the result of evolution, an instinctive action, Baenninger said.\n\nThough other creatures yawn - including dogs, cats and even snakes - contagious yawning is a "purely human occurrence," Broughton said. It begins around age 2.\n\nBaenninger and his students conducted a study to see if the contagion works between species. The students went to the zoo to observe whether humans would yawn when the animals did. A few people yawned in response to a lion's yawn, but the lion never replicated the humans' behavior, Baenninger said.\n\nThere is some evidence that when one ape yawns, others will too, the professor said.\n\nBroughton said it's not clear what causes yawns. He defined yawning as "slow, involuntary gaping movements of the mouth," and said the word is derived from the Old English word ganien, which means "to gape."\n\nSpontaneous yawning begins in the embryonic stage, so it is not learned behavior, Broughton said.\n\nThe idea of a fetus yawning while in the womb goes along with the notion of the action being a way to prepare for something, Baenninger said.\n\nYawning appears to be associated with sleepiness, though the idea that it has to do with boredom is not necessarily true, Broughton said. It's an unconscious effort to keep your alertness level elevated, Baenninger said.\n\n"I'm a professor. All professors are used to having students yawn at them," Baenninger said. But the yawns are an attempt to stay awake, rather than an affront, he said.\n\nA few notions about why we yawn have been debunked: "Because breathing takes in oxygen and removes carbon dioxide, theories in the past about why we yawn centered on the assumption that it was a reflex in response to low oxygen or high carbon dioxide levels," writes Dr. Robert H. Shmerling, an associate physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School.\n\n"This theory lost favor
467214
Yawns are one of the brain's ways of getting oxygen and fighting fatigue. If someone yawns in response to your yawn it's because they are feeling the same fatigue you are.
1037619
Because its physiological.\n\nNumber one, Yawns are caused by, indication of tiredness, stress, over-work or boredom, An action indicating psychological decompression after a state of high alert, and means of expressing powerful emotions like anger, rejection, apathy or tedium.  So when you see someone yawn, it may remind you of how tired you are, or stressed or whatever it might be.  Causing you to Yawn.  Even if you dont notice you saw someone yawn, your subconscious recognized the other persons yawn, and cause you to want to yawn.  Also, it may be your way of stretching, its also a way of streching your lungs out.  So basicly its a subconscious thing.
687663
yawning is contagious because you watch the other person yawning.  However, over the phone it is not contagious.  Also, if you are sitting on the same room but do not see the other person yawning then it contagious.  It is a way of reciprocating unconsciously.
435953
It's not that they are contagious.  Its just that people yawn because their brain isn't getting enough oxygen and when someone sees another person yawning they....yaaaaaaaawwwwnn.  And then another person sees THEM yawning and they think, "Hey, maybe MY brain needs more O2.  I think I'll just Yaaaaaaaawwwwn.  And then another person sees them yawning and they think, "Oh no, I don't have time to Yaaaaaaaaaawwwnnn."  And then another person sees them yawn and they sa...yaaaaaaaaaawwwwn.  I think this answer is making me sleepy.  Good night.
1005855
(1)"Virtually any stimulus associated with yawns -- including viewing, reading about, and even thinking about, yawning -- evokes yawns. (Are you yawning yet?) Yawning spreads in a chain reaction through a group, a compelling example of human herd behavior and a reminder that we are not always in conscious control of our actions. The urge to replicate an observed yawn is clearly an automatic response triggered by our brains.\n\nStudies partially explain the reason for yawning. Although we yawn more when sleepy or bored, it is unclear whether yawning increases alertness. And scientific evidence refutes one of the most popular myths of yawning? that it happens in response to low oxygen or high carbon dioxide levels in the blood or brain. Test subjects do not yawn more when breathing air with enhanced levels of carbon dioxide nor do they yawn less when breathing pure oxygen. One fact explains a lot of apparently inconsistent data. People yawn most during behavioral transitions, such as just after waking and shortly before bedtime. Yawning may help facilitate those changes. Contagious yawning may synchronize a group's behavior so that, for instance, a whole family goes to sleep together."\n\n(2)  "Professor Andrews told Scientific American yawns may be contagious because we human animals are trying to communicate changing environmental conditions to others, possibly as a way to synchronize behavior. Obviously, this would be one of those caveman-type mechanisms that is no longer needed that our bodies remember and still do.\n\nWhen we yawn, we draw in more oxygen and remove a build-up of carbon dioxide. Larger groups produce more carbon dioxide. So one theory holds that we yawn when we're in large groups of people to purge the carbon dioxide--and in so doing, we set off a chain reaction. But Robert Provine, a psychologist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, tested the theory and says it's bunk. Giving people additional oxygen didn't decrease yawning and decreasing the amount of carbon dioxide in a subject's environment also didn't prevent yawning, notes the How Stuff Works Web site.\n\nWhatever the reason for yawns being contagious, How Stuff Works reports that 55 percent of people will yawn within five minutes of seeing someone else yawn. In addition, blind people will yawn after hearing others yawning. And we're sure that reading and writing about yawns is enough to induce one!"
967357
The answer is, no one really knows why yawning is "contagious". Or why we yawn at all. One popular explanation is that yawning allows you to get rid of too much carbon dioxide in your system and increase your oxygen supply. This was disproved by Dr. Robert Provine and his research team in 1987.\n\nNow scientists are wondering if yawning is from our deep past -- part of our evolutionary history. Did a yawn signal to the group that it was time for everyone to retire to the trees and snooze? Did a yawn signal that we were all feeling cozy and warm about each other? Did a yawn signal something more like, "Gee, I know how you're feeling, I feel that way too."\n\nBetween 40 and 60 percent of the population seems to find yawning contagious. Researchers at the State University of New York conducted a series of yawning experiments. They determined that being self-aware (the ability to recognize oneself) and having the ability to see things from someone else's viewpoint means a person is more likely to find yawning contagious.\n\nNow you're thinking, what humans are not self-aware? Schizophrenics sometimes have trouble with self-recognition so they will not find yawning contagious. Babies won't yawn contagiously until they're more than a year old.\n\nSome birds and reptiles yawn. Most mammals yawn. My dog yawns, but that doesn't make me yawn -- I obviously cannot put myself in her paw prints. (But who can empathize with a creature that sleeps all day, then when she does bother to get up and join you on a walk, suddenly bolts after a squirrel and nearly tears your arm out of your socket? I have no idea what's going on in that dog's mind.)\n\nChimpanzees yawn too, and in fact, if they watch other chimps yawn, they're more likely to yawn too.\n\nSo, I guess the real answer is: who knows?
922965
THE TRUTH IS that we don’t completely understand why people, or animals for that matter, yawn. It’s widely assumed that yawning occurs because we are tired or bored or because we see someone else doing it, but there isn’t any hard evidence to support these beliefs.\n\nThe most plausible explanation, and the one that is taught in medical school, is that we yawn because oxygen levels in our lungs are low. Studies have shown that during normal, at-rest breathing, we don’t use anywhere near our lung capacity; for the most part, we just use the air sacs at the bottom of the lungs. If the air sacs, called alveoli, don’t get fresh air, they partially collapse and the lungs stiffen a bit. As a result, it’s believed, our brain prompts the body to either sigh or take a yawn to get more air into the lungs\nalso when we someone else yawn if someone else yawns, we are naturally competitive so if someone else is getting more oxygen, our body wants more.
56870
The dictionary tells us that yawning is caused by being fatigued, drowsy or bored, scientists are discovering that there is more to yawning than what most people think. Not much is known about why we yawn or if it serves any useful function, and very little research has been done on the subject. However, there are several theories about why we yawn.\nThe Physiological Theory -- Our bodies induce yawning to drawn in more oxygen or remove a build-up of carbon dioxide. This theory helps explain why we yawn in groups. Larger groups produce more carbon dioxide, which means our bodies would act to draw in more oxygen and get rid of the excess carbon dioxide. However, if our bodies make us yawn to drawn in needed oxygen, wouldn't we yawn during exercise? Robert Provine, a psychologist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and a leading expert on yawning, has tested this theory. Giving people additional oxygen didn't decrease yawning and decreasing the amount of carbon dioxide in a subject's environment also didn't prevent yawning. \nThe Evolution Theory -- Some think that yawning is something that began with our ancestors, who used yawning to show their teeth and intimidate others. An offshoot of this theory is the idea that yawning developed from early man as a signal for us to change activities. \nThe Boredom Theory -- In the dictionary, yawning is said to be caused by boredom, fatigue or drowsiness. Although we do tend to yawn when bored or tired.
239646
It's contagious to only those with an empathetic mind. Not everyone has one, so not everyone is going to yawn if someone else does.\n\nDon't listen to that Brisbane Roo character--he's full of it. It's true what he said about periods, but that has nothing to do with yawning.
178925
The reasons for this are unclear; however, recent research suggests that yawning might be a herd instinct.\n\nHerd Instinct\n-------------\nThe so-called herding instinct is a social tendency in humans to identify with and model many behaviors and beliefs after a larger group of individuals with whom they identify. This is sometimes referred to as "following the herd." Such people are sometimes labelled with the derogatory term "sheeple."\n\nSince the herding instinct includes both behavior and belief, the term 'herd behavior' describes only a part of this complex phenomenon in humans.
635799
1. because your body needs oxygen\n2. becaus you are bored and it is a way for your body to tell you to do something else\n3. becaus other people yawn. it is a social behavior that makes a group "stay together" \n\nhow? not sure, but I think your brain open your mouth and make your lungs draw in lots of air without letting you know first.
196592
It is the brain requiring more oxygen. Which is why when someone else yawns you do to, it is your brain making sure that it has enough in case the other person takes it all. Not very likely to happen unless in a confined space, but the brain is always on survival mode.