Even if it turns out that some yawns can be explained through purely physiological means, yawning is also contagious for humans and other species. If someone watches someone else yawning, they’ll be likely to yawn as well. That means that there is social component to yawning, and it might be related to empathy. It turns out that there’s a correlation between a person’s self-reported empathy and their susceptibility to reacting to a yawn contagion, and those who are more skilled at theory of mind tasks are also more likely (PDF) to yawn contagiously.
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