Everyone has probably seen or participated in the yawn passing. One person yawns and you yawn in reply. In fact, I’m even curious as to how many people yawned when they read the word “yawn” in my subject or even as they read this… Why do we do this…?
But wait, here’s part 2… when my dog yawns, i yawn. when the cat yawns, i yawn (sometimes for all of these situations…)… why don’t animals yawn in response to our yawns? Does the fact that we can comprehend the meaning of that yawn as being tired and thus react, but animals do not understand this?
Cecil answered this once… not conclusive, however. http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_309.html
I read somewhere else that we yawn (and show our teeth) when we feel sleep coming on as a way to warn others to back off. This is something from pre-historic times, you see.
This makes sense, I think, because we also show our teeth when we are afraid. Look at those pictures of people on a roller coaster as they pass the camera set up near the bottom of the first drop. Everyone is grinning. Out of cold, hard, fear.
I think yawning is related to that. You show me your teeth and I’m going to show you mine – so don’t mess with me bud!
According to the profit, Satan makes you yawn. So by inspiring others to yawn, I suppose you are trying to convert them to Satanism.
http://muttaqun.com/yawning.html
A local hospital here ran one of those “We tell you something interesting so you’ll think we are great” commercials about yawning. One of their researchers has a theory that yawning is a social interaction, a way to help people bond and grow closer. It makes sense when you think about two people yawning. They comment on and laugh about it, even if complete strangers.
According to a New Scientist article a few years ago, it’s actually the opposite. Yawning before sleep is a way to try and stay awake. So it being catching makes sense; if others around us need to stay alert for some reason, we probably do too.
"Why then do we yawn? To ready our brains for switching gears, says Ronald Baenninger, a psychologist at Temple University in Philadelphia. Baenninger asked people to wear motion-sensing wristbands as they went about their normal routines and to hit a button on the device whenever they yawned. After collecting data for two weeks, Baenninger found that yawning tended to precede periods of activity. Within 15 minutes of yawning, his subjects were generally engaged in some form of hustle or bustle.
There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that yawning helps the brain to gear up for something big, says Provine. Olympic athletes yawn before a competition, paratroopers yawn before their first jump, undergraduates yawn before final exams, and violinists yawn before a concert. “I’ve never seen so much yawning as before a marathon,” notes Baenninger. And it’s not that the runners, jumpers and virtuosos are tired or bored, he says. They’re simply working to maintain a certain level of physiological arousal, so they’ll be prepared for the main event.
“We yawn in situations where there is nothing to stimulate us, but it would be bad to lose the level of arousal,” Baenninger explains. "
I read something some time ago with a joking answer… they based it on the yawning that happens at high altitudes sometimes… their theory was that if you yawn to stabilize ear pressure, the difference you made in your ear throws off the total equillibrium of ambient pressure, thus making everyone within some distance yawn also.
5 times I yawned whilst reading this thread in total which isn’t too bad when you consider that my girlfriend didn’t even make it to the end of the page
Actually she has a yawning problem, as described above, which I have always found fasinating. Recently I’ve conducted the odd test on her and now I can get her to yawn when I say the word ‘JIM’ (Jim being a guy who likes her). Now when anyone introduces themselves as ‘Jim’ she yawns.
Yesterday was the first time I copuld get her to yawn by passing her a piece of paper with the word ‘yawn’ on it and have yet to try it with the word ‘jim’ but I’ll let you know how I get on.
b) she didn’t really get much of a chance really once I figured out how much it affected her.
At the moment someone can be talking to her and mention the name ‘jim’ but she’ll only yawn if she thinks of me. Everytime I say it she yawns. I need to get someone els to talk to her and bring up the name to see how she reacts.
b) she didn’t really get much of a chance really once I figured out how much it affected her.
At the moment someone can be talking to her and mention the name ‘jim’ but she’ll only yawn if she thinks of me. Everytime I say it she yawns. I need to get someone els to talk to her and bring up the name to see how she reacts.
I talked for about 30 seconds and then said ‘Oh, I was thinking of going to the gym tonight’ (I usually do so it wouldn’t be a surprise as such) - no reaction.
Then about a minute later I said ‘I think no one plays Welsh music in Paris like Jim’ and she yawned.
Hmm, not too sure what that means but it turns out now that have to buy her flowers before she finds this site
I’ve got a friend who’s a choir teacher in a high school and we got on this subject. He hypothesized that when you yawn you use a part of the soft pallette in the mouth and hearing that, makes your mouth react in the same way and then you yawn. He spoke using the back part of the soft pallette and it made me yawn. He said he also talks like that when he wants over more quickly. I wasn’t able to replicate it tho
