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

Contagious yawning is a common, but poorly understood phenomenon. We hypothesized that contagious yawning is part of a more general phenomenon known as mental state attribution (i.e. the ability to inferentially model the mental states of others). To test this hypothesis we compared susceptibility t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Brain research. Cognitive brain research 2003-07, Vol.17 (2), p.223-227
Main Authors: Platek, Steven M, Critton, Samuel R, Myers, Thomas E, Gallup, Gordon G
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Analysis of Variance
Awareness - physiology
Biological and medical sciences
Contagious yawning
Emotional contagion
Emotions - physiology
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Male
Mental state attribution
Neuropsychological Tests - statistics & numerical data
Photic Stimulation - methods
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reaction Time - physiology
Schizophrenia
Schizotypal personality
Self
Self Concept
Self-awareness
Social attribution, perception and cognition
Social psychology
Yawning - physiology
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Summary:Contagious yawning is a common, but poorly understood phenomenon. We hypothesized that contagious yawning is part of a more general phenomenon known as mental state attribution (i.e. the ability to inferentially model the mental states of others). To test this hypothesis we compared susceptibility to contagiously yawn with performance on a self-face recognition task, several theory of mind stories, and on a measure of schizotypal personality traits. Consistent with the hypothesis, susceptibility to contagiously yawn was positively related to performance on self-face recognition and faux pas theory of mind stories, and negatively related to schizotypal personality traits. These data suggest that contagious yawning may be associated with empathic aspects of mental state attribution and are negatively affected by increases in schizotypal personality traits much like other self-processing related tasks.
ISSN:0926-6410
DOI:10.1016/S0926-6410(03)00109-5