Contagious yawning: the role of self-awareness and mental state attribution

An investigation of auditory contagious yawning

“…Finally, the relationship between empathy scores and yawn measures was investigated. Previous studies have indicated a positive relationship between empathy levels and a person's susceptibility to contagious yawning (Platek et al, 2003;Platek et al, 2005). Indeed, a Pearson correlation analysis of each participants' yawn susceptibility measure (see the Method section) and empathy measure (i.e., their score on the Empathy Quotient scale) confirmed this hypothesis, revealing a modest, but significant, positive correlation (Pearson correlation, r .57; p .05, one-tailed; n 10).…”

“…Finally, given reports of links between empathy and contagious yawning (Platek et al, 2003;Platek et al, 2005), as well as more empathic individuals showing greater hemodynamic activity in putative MN areas Kaplan & Iacoboni, 2006;Pfeifer, Iacoboni, Mazziotta, & Dapretto, 2008), one-tailed Pearson correlation analyses were carried out. Correlations between empathy level and susceptibility to contagious yawning were conducted by using each participant's empathy level (determined by using the Empathy Quotient scale; Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright, 2004) and yawn susceptibility (determined by calculating, for each participant, the difference between their mean urge-to-yawn rating of all yawn sounds and their mean urge-to-yawn rating of all control sounds).…”

Catch the wave: prairie dogs assess neighbours’ awareness using contagious displays

“…Yawning in humans and other primates [51,52] and laughter among humans [53] provide familiar examples of contagious displays. Platek et al [51], among others, have reported that such behaviours are associated with self-processing and empathy in humans.…”

Neural basis of contagious itch and why some people are more prone to it

“…For instance, Carr et al (18) suggested that viewing a facial expression activates emotion-related parts of the brain via the motor-based mirror system, and that this could be the neural basis of empathy (19). There is compelling evidence linking empathy with some forms of emotional or behavioral "contagion" (20,21), although contagious itch has not been considered in any previous studies. However, some studies did not implicate actionbased mirror systems as the interface between perception and feeling (22,23), but suggested instead that feeling states can be shared without obligatory motor simulation.…”