Why do you want to yawn when you see others yawn?

To test this, Platek of new york State University and his colleagues showed volunteers a video of people yawning. As a result, more than 40% volunteers yawned with people on the screen, and 60% of these "infected" people yawned more than once. The researchers immediately asked these people to take an empathy test, and their scores were very high.

There are three theories that yawning is contagious. These three theories are: physiological theory, boredom theory and evolution theory.

According to the physiological theory, yawning is a reaction of the brain to realize the need to supplement oxygen. Yawning is contagious because everyone in the room may feel the need for oxygen at the same time. Yawning may also be stimulated by external factors, to a great extent, just like seeing others eating will make them feel hungry.

Boredom theory is based on the assumption that if everyone finds something boring, they will yawn. But this theory cannot explain why people yawn when they are bored, unless people take yawning as an instinctive way and use body language to express their disinterest in something.

According to the theory of evolution, people yawn to show their teeth, which was handed down by our primitive ancestors. Yawning may be an act of warning others. Since human development has entered a civilized society, yawning to warn others is out of date.

Because people haven't found the exact reason why yawning is contagious, this problem is still a mystery.

It is also said that yawning is because the body feels tired and needs to be supplemented with oxygen, so it is directly supplemented by inhaling a lot of air through the nose and mouth. As for why you want to yawn when you see others yawn, there is a saying that this is the instinct of human subconscious survival competition, because when someone starts yawning in a place, it may suggest to people that the air in this place is running out of oxygen. Based on the instinct of survival, human beings subconsciously remind themselves to take a deep breath of air, so as not to be unable to breathe fresh air when the air is insufficient, because survival is an instinct and a subconscious reaction, so even if they see pictures, they will react.