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One person yawns. Give it 2-5 seconds and the person next to him yawns aswell.
Why does this happen? Is it psychological?
Why does this happen? Is it psychological?
Gordon Gallup, who hypothesizes that yawning may be a means of keeping the brain cool, also hypothesizes that "contagious" yawning may be a survival instinct inherited from our evolutionary past. "During human evolutionary history when we were subject to predation and attacks by other groups, if everybody yawns in response to seeing someone yawn, the whole group becomes much more vigilant, and much better at being able to detect danger.
If yawning is a means to keep the brain cool, why don't we see joggers yawning all the time?
I had a similar reaction to the wiki article zooby. Here's another article that discounts some of the things in the wiki article. According to this one, there's no basis for thinking it removes excess CO2 from the body, something I was told a long time ago. Anyway, I did yawn once while reading this one.Anyone else?
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/yawning.html
Just by reading the titlebut I was already feeling sleepy - it was just the tipping point.