Is yawning contagious? My daughter wants to do a science fair project on contagious yawning. We`re not really sure how to go about it.Does anyone have any helpful research links?Thanks for any and all help,roxpate.

Hello Roxanne,

The truth is that no one really knows why yawning is contagious.

Not everyone is convinced that it is.

We yawn naturally to get extra oxygen into our lungs but I find that I tend to yawn more when I am tired. Perhaps this is because when we are tired we need to take in more oxygen to keep our bodies better fed.

My own personal view is that yawns are actually not medically contagious but psychologically contagious. We see someone yawning and something in our brain makes us want to join them, whether we need the extra oxygen or not.

There are literally thousands of pages on the website dealing with this subject. I typed in "Is yawning really contagious" in the Google Search Engine and came up with 42.000 pages on the subject.

I hope this has been of a little help to you and may I welcome you to the Askme Helpdesk.

Poseidon

Check out these sites here

www.psycport.com/showArticle.cfm?


www.healthlink.mcw.edu/article/901227084.html

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Originally Posted by roxpate

Is yawning contagious? My daughter wants to do a science fair project on contagious yawning. We`re not really sure how to go about it.Does anyone have any helpful research links?Thanks for any and all help,roxpate.

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Does anyone have some cool ideas on how to perform this project?I mean,should we just go to the mall and start yawning and mark down if they did or didn`t? Thanks,Roxanne.

Hey Roxanne,

I read that one of the reasons people yawn is because they are bored.

The idea you have suggested might not work, since there might be other reasons they are yawning.

What I think you need here is to find some long term participants. When I say long term, it can be just for 1 day. Try taking a look at http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/yawn.html . It has a form you can download for a Yawning Experiment.

Here are some links to 3 Experiments done to test yawning. You might be able to replicate some of them.

Experiment 1: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/ug/shawr/exp1.htm
Experiment 2: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/ug/shawr/exp2.htm
Experiment 3: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/ug/shawr/exp3.htm