Why do we yawn when someone else does?
Proof that your brain might actually be polite
We’ve all been there. Fine one minute, then someone across the room yawns and suddenly your jaw unhinges like a Burmese python.
What’s happening here? Is it true that psychopaths are immune to the yawning contagion? And if you had a hundred people in a room, could you start a yawning Mexican wave?
What We Think We Know About Yawning
For something so ordinary, yawning is weirdly mysterious. You’d think science would have cracked it by now, but no.
We know we yawn when we’re tired, bored. I have clear memories of yawning on a Sunday evening, thinking about school in the morning while my parents were watching an episode of Antiques Roadshow that felt like it would never end. But contagious yawning - when someone else’s yawn sets off a chain reaction - is a whole different beast.
It’s not just a human thing either. Chimps do it. Dogs do it. Even budgies have been caught in a yawn contagion. In a 2015 study from the State University of New York, named Experimental evidence of contagious yawning in budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus), every budgie shown a video of a yawning budgie also yawned!
Which suggests it’s not about boredom, it’s something wired deep into mammalian species like us. Social effect, or a primitive form of empathy.
The Science Bit
The current favourite explanation involves mirror neurons: brain cells that fire both when we do something and when we see someone else doing it.
They’re the reason you flinch when your colleague stubs their toe on a desk, or why you can’t watch someone chopping an onion without blinking in sympathy.
When we see someone yawn, those mirror neurons essentially copy the feeling, triggering a kind of “me too” reflex in our own brain. It’s empathy at the level of jaw muscles.
Other scientists think yawning might be less social and more… thermal.
There’s a theory that yawning helps cool the brain. By stretching the jaw, you draw in cool air and increase blood flow around the skull, bringing the temperature down.
If that’s true, then catching someone’s yawn could simply be your body syncing up with the group. A kind of primitive thermostat. Which gets you thinking… maybe it’s more than just temperature. Maybe it’s a leftover coordination tool from when survival depended on being in sync.
In evolutionary terms, groups that rested together, woke together, or paid attention together probably had a better shot at making it through the night. So if one of your tribe yawned, your brain saying “Roger that, time to recharge” might’ve been a subtle act of cooperation.
If that were the case, it remains a form of empathy. Not the soft, sentimental kind, but the practical, biological sort that says we move together or we don’t move at all.
Think of it as the original group chat: a primitive ride-or-die mechanism for social animals trying to stay alive in a competitive landscape.
The Empathy Question (and the Psychopath Myth)
In the mid-2000s, psychologists noticed something intriguing: people who scored higher on empathy tests were more likely to “catch” yawns.
Cue irresistible headline:
“Psychopaths don’t yawn.”
It’s a perfect bit of pop psychology. Easy to remember, impossible to resist repeating at dinner parties… but not quite true.
The early studies were tiny. Think a few dozen undergrads having a good time rather than a line up of Bond villains. And later research has been far more nuanced. Stress, tiredness, mood, and even how familiar you are with the yawner all play a role.
So if you yawn when your partner does but not when your boss does, that might say less about your empathy and more about how much you like your boss. Or maybe you’re at work at the height of your circadian cycle but snuggled up with your partner in the evening after a long day.
So if you don’t yawn when anyone else does? Don’t worry, you’re not necessarily a psychopath. Maybe just well rested.
Why It Matters
Contagious yawning sounds trivial, but it’s a nice fuzzy reminder of how connected we actually are as a species. Humans are social mimics - we mirror accents, even walking pace. We subconsciously copy facial expressions to build trust. Yawning is just the sleepy version of the same box of tricks. A neurological handshake that says, “I’m with you.”
Think about it, your brain watches another brain do something, and quietly decides to join in. No thought, no language, no logic. Just pure, ancient empathy. Kind of quaint isn’t it? So next time someone yawns and you follow suit, don’t apologise. You’re not being rude you’re demonstrating a well-functioning social brain.
And if you didn’t?
Well… maybe you’re just not tired.
Probably.
C.M.
No ads, no sponsors, just curiosity ☕️ buymeacoffee.com/becauseapparently