People that score high on psychopathic traits are less likely to yawn contagiously

Abstract

Considerable variation exists in the contagiousness of yawning, and numerous studies have been conducted to investigate the proximate mechanisms involved in this response. Yet, findings within the psychological literature are mixed, with many studies conducted on relatively small and homogeneous samples. Here, we aimed to replicate and extend upon research suggesting a negative relationship between psychopathic traits and yawn contagion in community samples. In the largest study of contagious yawning to date (N = 458), which included both university students and community members from across 50 nationalities, participants completed an online study in which they self-reported on their yawn contagion to a video stimulus and completed four measures of psychopathy: the primary and secondary psychopathy scales from the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (LSRPS), the psychopathy construct from the Dirty Dozen, and the Psychopathic Personality Traits Scale (PPTS). Results support previous findings in that participants that yawned contagiously tended to score lower on the combined and primary measures of psychopathy. That said, tiredness was the strongest predictor across all models. These findings align with functional accounts of spontaneous and contagious yawning and a generalized impairment in overall patterns of behavioral contagion and biobehavioral synchrony among people high in psychopathic traits.

Familiarity modulates both intra- and interspecific yawn contagion in red-capped mangabeys

“…Instead, the attentional bias hypothesis predicts that YC is merely linked to the higher levels of social attention that observers devote to more relevant subjects (i.e., familiar or dominant) 25 . More recently, Gallup et al 26 found that those people scoring high levels of psychopathic traits, which are associated with reduced affective empathy, also showed low levels of YC, with the yawn response not depending on the attentional level. Although this dualistic conceptual approach is present in literature, the two aspects are difficult to disentangle since probably both attentional and affective processes play a role in the modulation of YC 20 .…”

No Evidence for Contagious Yawning in Juvenile Ravens (Corvus corax): An Observational Study

“…While some experimental studies have reported emotional contagion among ravens [ 49 , 50 ], to date, there is no evidence for this capacity among budgerigars. Instead, contagious yawning may be tied to bodily synchrony only [ 75 ], which budgerigars display when interacting with conspecifics [ 76 ].…”

Interspecific Contagious Yawning in Humans

“…The same was true for overall yawn frequency, except in the case of the amphibian and mammal conditions. The attentional checks to the pairing of yawn and non-yawning stimuli produced a robust response, with a comparably high rate of yawn contagion (69%) to a recent online study on intraspecific yawn contagion using compiled video clips [ 27 ]. Contrary to our predictions, however, neither phylogenetic proximity nor domestication/social closeness of the yawning stimuli enhanced this response.…”

“…Psychological experiments on humans have consistently found that people yawn in response to seeing, hearing, and even thinking about other people yawning [ 5 , 24 , 25 ], while individual differences in this response are related to variability in biobehavioral synchrony [ 26 , 27 ]. Yawn contagion is also common among non-human great apes, including chimpanzees [ 28 , 29 ], bonobos [ 30 , 31 ], and orangutans [ 32 ].…”

“…Lastly, given that physiological variables known to alter spontaneous yawning also modulate yawn contagion [ 27 ], we also hypothesized that participant tiredness at the time of testing would predict interspecies contagious yawning. Relatedly, based on the association between yawning and sleep/wake cycles [ 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 ], we also took into account the duration of the sleep the night prior to testing.…”