Individual Variation in Contagious Yawning Susceptibility Is Highly Stable and Largely Unexplained by Empathy or Other Known Factors
Abstract
The contagious aspect of yawning is a well-known phenomenon that exhibits variation
in the human population. Despite the observed variation, few studies have addressed
its intra-individual reliability or the factors modulating differences in the susceptibility
of healthy volunteers. Due to its obvious biological basis and impairment in diseases
like autism and schizophrenia, a better understanding of this trait could lead to
novel insights into these conditions and the general biological functioning of humans.
We administered 328 participants a 3-minute yawning video stimulus, a cognitive battery,
and a comprehensive questionnaire that included measures of empathy, emotional contagion,
circadian energy rhythms, and sleepiness. Individual contagious yawning measurements
were found to be highly stable across testing sessions, both in a lab setting and
if administered remotely online, confirming that certain healthy individuals are less
susceptible to contagious yawns than are others. Additionally, most individuals who
failed to contagiously yawn in our study were not simply suppressing their reaction,
as they reported not even feeling like yawning in response to the stimulus. In contrast
to previous studies indicating that empathy, time of day, or intelligence may influence
contagious yawning susceptibility, we found no influence of these variables once accounting
for the age of the participant. Participants were less likely to show contagious yawning
as their age increased, even when restricting to ages of less than 40 years. However,
age was only able to explain 8% of the variability in the contagious yawn response.
The vast majority of the variability in this extremely stable trait remained unexplained,
suggesting that studies of its inheritance are warranted.
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/8402Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1371/journal.pone.0091773Publication Info
Bartholomew, Alex J; & Cirulli, Elizabeth T (2014). Individual Variation in Contagious Yawning Susceptibility Is Highly Stable and Largely
Unexplained by Empathy or Other Known Factors. PLoS One, 9(3). 10.1371/journal.pone.0091773. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/8402.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Alex Bartholomew
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