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- mise à jour
du
- 26 novebre
2023
- Hum
Nat.
- 2023
Nov 15
- doi:
10.1007/s12110-023-09463-1
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- Social
Cognitive Correlates of
- Contagious
Yawning and Smiling
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- Poole KL, Henderson HA
-
- Department of Psychology,
University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue
West, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1, Canada
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- Tous
les articles sur la contagion du
bâillement
- All
articles about contagious
yawning
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- Abstract
- It has been theorized that the contagion of
behaviors may be related to social cog- nitive
abilities, but empirical findings are
inconsistent. The authors recorded young adults'
behavioral expression of contagious yawning and
contagious smiling to video stimuli and employed
a multi-method assessment of sociocognitive
abilities including self-reported internal
experience of emotional contagion, self-reported
trait empathy, accuracy on a theory of mind
task, and observed helping behavior.
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- Results revealed that contagious yawners
reported increases in tiredness from pre- to
post-video stimuli exposure, providing support
for the internal experience of emotional
contagion, and were more likely to provide help
to the experimenter relative to non-contagious
yawners. Contagious smilers showed stably high
levels of self-reported happiness from pre- to
post-video exposure, were more likely to provide
help to the experimenter, and had increased
accuracy on a theory of mind task relative to
non-contagious smilers. There were no
differences in self-reported trait empathy for
contagious versus non-contagious yawners or
smilers.
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- Contagious yawning may be related to some
basic (i.e., emotional contagion) and advanced
(i.e., helping behavior) sociocognitive
processes, whereas contagious smiling is related
to some advanced sociocognitive processes (i.e.,
theory of mind and helping behavior).
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- Résumé
- La théorie veut que la
réplication (cf contagion) des
comportements soit liée aux
capacités cognitives sociales, mais les
résultats des études empiriques ne
sont pas tous cohérents. Les auteurs ont
enregistré l'expression comportementale
de jeunes adultes (bâillements et sourires
contagieux) en réponse à des
stimuli vidéo et ont utilisé une
évaluation multi-méthodes des
capacités sociocognitives, y compris
l'expérience personnelle de contagion
émotionnelle, l'empathie
autodéclarée, la précision
d'une tâche de théorie de l'esprit
et l'observation du comportement d'aide.
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- Les résultats ont
révélé que les
bâilleurs contagieux ont signalé
une augmentation de la fatigue avant et
après l'exposition aux stimuli
vidéo, ce qui confirme
l'expérience personnelle de la contagion
émotionnelle, et qu'ils étaient
plus susceptibles d'aider
l'expérimentateur que les bâilleurs
non contagieux.
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- Les bâilleurs contagieux ont
montré des niveaux élevés
et stables de bonheur auto-déclaré
avant et après l'exposition à la
vidéo, étaient plus susceptibles
de fournir de l'aide à
l'expérimentateur et avaient une plus
grande précision dans une tâche de
théorie de l'esprit par rapport aux
bâilleurs non contagieux.
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- Il n'y avait pas de différences dans
l'empathie autodéclarée entre les
bâilleurs contagieux et les
bâilleurs non contagieux. Le
bâillement contagieux peut être
lié à certains processus
sociocognitifs de base (contagion
émotionnelle) et avancés
(comportement d'aide), tandis que le sourire
contagieux est lié à certains
processus sociocognitifs avancés
(théorie de l'esprit et comportement
d'aide).
- Broadly speaking, behavioral contagion
refers to the spreading of a behavior among
individuals. For behavioral contagion to occur,
the action of one person serves as a triggering
stimulus, and when this is observed by another
person, the behavior may then be generated by
the observer (Palagi et al., 2020).
Subsequently, this behavioral contagion may
translate into emotional contagion, such that
the internal state of the person who was the
triggering stimulus is transmitted to the
observing person (de Waal & Preston, 2017;
Palagi et al., 2020; Preston & de Waal,
2002). Thus, conta- gion may comprise both an
observable external expression as well as an
unobserv- able internal experience, which we
will refer to as behavioral contagion and emo-
tional contagion, respectively.
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- A perception-action mechanism has been used
to describe the contagion process such that when
an individual perceives another person's
behavior, the observer's representations of that
behavior are likewise activated (de Waal &
Preston, 2017; Preston & de Waal, 2002). The
perception-action mechanism is conceptualized as
a basic sociocognitive process comprising
behavioral contagion and emotional conta- gion
(de Waal & Preston, 2017; Preston & de
Waal, 2002). Some researchers have described
contagion as an automatic, basic, implicit, and
uncontrollable process (see Prochazkova &
Kret, 2017) that may serve as the foundation for
the development of higher-order sociocognitive
abilities in a hierarchal fashion (de Waal &
Preston, 2017; Preston & de Waal, 2002). For
example, behavioral and emotional contagion may
facilitate the development of higher-order
sociocognitive abilities, including empathic
concern (i.e., concern about another's state)
and theory of mind (i.e., abil- ity to attribute
mental states, intentions, and beliefs to
another person), as well as behavioral
manifestations of empathy and theory of mind,
such as helping behavior (i.e., a type of
prosocial behavior; see de Waal & Preston,
2017, for a review).
-
- An emerging body of work has examined the
relation between the susceptibility of
performing contagious behaviors and various
sociocognitive processes. One of the most widely
studied contagious behaviors is yawning, a
phenomenon in which the mere sight, mention, or
sound of another person yawning can elicit
yawning in the observer (Provine, 1986, 2005).
Contagious yawning contrasts with spontaneous
yawning, which is generated by an individual due
to their own internal or external circumstance
and not to the observation of another individual
yawning. For example, a person may yawn due to
tiredness, drowsiness, or boredom (Provine &
Hamernik, 1986; Provine et al., 1987), and a
person may also yawn before or after periods of
stress or anxiety (Baenninger, 1997) as a
mechanism to regulate arousal, facilitate
alertness, and increase threat detection
(Gallup, 2022; see Guggisberg et al., 2010;
Gallup, 2011, for reviews).
-
- Several lines of research have provided
indirect support for the hypothesis that
contagious yawning may be related to
sociocognitive processes (as detailed below).
For example, contagious yawning emerges in the
preschool years paralleling the developmental
timetable of sociocognitive abilities such as
empathy and theory of mind (Anderson & Meno,
2003; Cordoni et al., 2021; Helt et al., 2010),
pos- sibly suggesting ontogenetic development.
Some work has also found higher lev- els of
contagious yawning among women than among men
(Chan & Tseng, 2017; Norscia et al., 2016,
although see Bartholomew & Cirulli, 2014;
Gallup & Mas- sen, 2016), consistent with
the broader literature that finds women to have
higher levels of empathy than men. Other work
has also found that contagious yawning is
sensitive to social context, such that rates are
higher when the person who gen- erates the
stimulating yawn is more socially connected to
the observer (Norscia & Palagi, 2011;
Norscia et al., 2016). Further, there is
evidence of contagious yawn- ing not only among
humans but also among non-human animals with
sophisticated sociocognitive abilities and/or
highly social species (e.g., Anderson et al.,
2004; Madsen & Persson, 2013). Contagious
yawning is also observed in species that do not
have advanced sociocognitive abilities, however,
and is not found in some spe- cies with advanced
sociocognitive abilities (Anderson, 2020; Palagi
et al., 2020; Gallup, 2022). Additional indirect
support for the association between contagious
yawning and sociocognitive abilities comes from
studies reporting reduced levels of contagious
yawning in populations characterized by
sociocognitive deficits, particu- larly
impairments in empathy and theory of mind, such
as autism spectrum disorder (ASD; Helt et al.,
2010, 2020; Senju et al., 2009), schizophrenia
(Haker & Rössler, 2009), and those with
schizotypal (Platek et al., 2003) and
psychopathic (Gallup et al., 2021; Helt et al.,
2021; Rundle et al., 2015) traits. However,
there is evidence to suggest that, at least for
some populations such as those with ASD, the
lowered rate of contagious yawning is due to
attentional biases away from faces and thus a
lowered detection of yawning, as opposed to
sociocognitive deficits per se (Helt et al.,
2020, 2021; Senju et al., 2009; Usui et al.,
2013).
-
- The findings from the body of work that has
examined relations between conta- gious yawning
and more direct measures of social cognition
have been inconsist- ent. Some work has found
that contagious yawning was positively
correlated with self-reported trait empathy in
adults (Arnott et al., 2009; Franzen et al.,
2018) and children who are developing typically
(Helt et al., 2020). Despite these reported
relations, several additional studies have
failed to find an association between con-
tagious yawning and measures of self-reported
trait empathy (e.g., Bartholomew & Cirulli,
2014; Gottfried et al., 2015; Haker &
Rössler, 2009; see Massen & Gal- lup,
2017, for an extensive review). In samples of
adults, some contagious yawn- ers scored higher
on theory of mind tasks assessing false-belief
and social faux pas (Platek et al., 2003),
whereas other work found no differences on a
theory of mind task assessing one's ability to
decode the mental states of others based on
photo- graphs of one's eyes (Gottfried et al.,
2015). To our knowledge, only one study has
examined behavioral manifestations of
empathy&emdash;specifically, donation behavior
as a form of prosocial behavior&emdash;and found
that contagious yawners did not differ in the
amount of money they donated relative to
non-contagious yawners across two experiments
(Franzen et al., 2018).
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- Although research has indirectly and
directly examined sociocognitive corre- lates of
contagious yawning, the pattern of findings is
inconsistent, and at least three methodological
and theoretical gaps are apparent. First, to our
knowledge, existing studies on contagious
yawning have only examined the expression of
contagion (i.e., overt display of behavior) and
have not directly examined the experience of
conta- gion (i.e., subjective internal state).
That is, existing studies have measured behav-
ioral contagion of yawning, which does not
directly provide information on whether the
contagious yawner experiences a change in
internal state to match the state of the person
who displayed the yawn stimulus (i.e., emotional
contagion; see Gallup et al., 2021; Massen &
Gallup, 2017, for a discussion of this issue).
Inclusion of self-reported data on participants'
internal state before and after viewing
contagion stimuli would provide insight into the
experience of emotional contagion and fur- ther
our understanding of whether susceptibility to
perform contagious behaviors is related to
changes in internal state. Second, existing
studies routinely have not integrated a
multi-method, multi-measure approach to studying
social-cognitive pro- cesses in relation to
contagious yawning, with many relying on
self-reported trait empathy. To provide a more
comprehensive investigation, it is important to
assess various theoretically hypothesized
correlates of behavioral and emotional contagion
(e.g., empathy, theory of mind, helping
behavior; de Waal & Preston, 2017) across
several subjective and objective measures
(Massen & Gallup, 2017). This is impor- tant
because self-reported perceptions of trait
empathy are oftentimes unrelated to performance
on tasks that assess sociocognitive ability
(e.g., theory of mind tasks; Sunahara et al.,
2022).
-
- Finally, relatively few studies have
directly compared the sociocognitive corre-
lates of yawn contagion relative to other forms
of contagion, such as in response to laughing
stimuli. Thus, it remains less clear whether the
same social-cognitive processes might be related
to contagion across different target behaviors
(Kapitány & Nielsen, 2017). Similar
to studies of contagious yawning, previous work
has dem- onstrated that humans experience
contagious smiling/laughter following observa-
tion of another person laughing (Provine, 1992),
although empirical work has noted that
contagious smiling is the most common response,
with overt laugher occurring infrequently in
response to video stimuli (De Weck et al.,
2022). As with yawn- ing, contagious
smiling/laughing contrasts with spontaneous
smiling/laughing in that spontaneous
smiling/laughter is generated by an individual
without observing another person
smiling/laughing: for example, due to happiness,
perceiving an event as humorous, or to signal
social agreement and affiliation (Scott et al.,
2022).
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- Some studies that have included both yawning
and laughing/smiling stimuli have found no
differences in self-reported trait empathy or
prosocial behavior (specifi- cally, donation
behavior) among contagious and non-contagious
laughers, despite contagious yawners having
higher self-reported trait empathy as noted
above (Franzen et al., 2018). Among typically
developing children, contagious laughter has
been correlated with higher levels of
self-reported empathy, similar to conta- gious
yawning (Helt et al., 2020). Thus, based on
preliminary work, there are incon- sistencies in
terms of the relation between contagious
smiling/laugher and some sociocognitive
correlates, including empathy and prosocial
behavior.
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- The primary objective of the current study
was to bring greater clarity to the body of work
on contagious yawning by collecting several
measures of social cognition proposed within the
action-perception mechanism (de Waal &
Preston, 2017). These measures included the
experience of emotional contagion by collecting
participant's self-reported internal state
before and after viewing the contagion videos,
self-reported perceptions of trait empathy,
accuracy on a theory of mind task, and a
hypothesized behavioral manifestation of
empathy: helping behavior. As a secondary
objective, we also examined contagious smiling
among the same sample of participants, allowing
us to compare social cognitive correlates across
different stimulus behaviors. We hypoth- esized
that behavioral contagion would be related to
the experience of emotional con- tagion such
that contagious yawners would show increases in
self-reported tiredness and contagious smilers
would show increases in self-reported happiness
from pre- to post-video exposure. Based on
previous empirical work, we hypothesized that
conta- gious yawning and smiling would be
unrelated to self-reported trait empathy
(Bartho- lomew & Cirulli, 2014; Gottfried et
al., 2015; Haker & Rössler, 2009) and
theory of mind (Gottfried et al., 2015). Based
on theoretical work suggesting a relation
between behavioral contagion and social cohesion
and group synchrony, we expected conta- gious
yawning and smiling to be related to helping
behavior (e.g., Casetta et al., 2021; Gallup,
2022; Preston & de Waal, 2002).
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- Discussion
-
- We examined multiple sociocognitive
processes in relation to contagious yawning and
contagious smiling in a sample of young adults.
We found some support for enhanced social
cognitive processes in relation to
susceptibility to perform conta- gious
behaviors, but this differed across method used
to assess social cognition and the target
contagion behavior.
-
- We measured how expressed behavioral
contagion was related to the self-reported
experience of emotional contagion (i.e., the
transmission of the internal state of the
releasing stimulus to the observer) (Hatfield et
al., 1993; Prochazkova & Kret, 2017).
Despite the hypothesis that contagious yawners
experience emotional conta- gion, as noted by
others (e.g., Gallup et al., 2021; Massen &
Gallup, 2017), to con- tagiously yawn does not
necessarily equate to the change in one's
subjective internal state to match the state of
the releasing person. We found evidence that
contagious yawners experienced greater increases
in tiredness from before to after watching the
contagion videos relative to non-contagious
yawners, which to our knowledge pro- vides the
first empirical support that contagious yawners
may not only show conta- gion on a behavioral
level but also experience changes in their
internal state. When we examined changes in
internal emotional experience before and after
video expo- sure among contagious smilers, we
did not find increases in happiness; instead we
found that contagiously smiling played a role in
maintaining the preexisting height- ened levels
of happiness compared with the non-contagious
smilers. This may sug- gest that
individual-level factors such as state mood play
a role in the susceptibility to contagiously
smile in response to others' laughter, and that
contagiously smiling does not necessarily result
in increases in happiness, at least in the
context of video stimuli. It is possible that
within a more naturalistic social interaction,
this effect might be stronger.
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- According to the perception-action
mechanism, behavioral and emotional conta- gion
may provide the bases for higher-order
sociocognitive processes, such as empathy,
theory of mind, and helping behavior (de Waal
& Preston, 2017). We found some evi- dence
of this, but it differed based on the method for
assessing sociocognitive corre- lates and the
contagion behavior of interest. When examining
self-reported trait empa- thy, we found no
support for a relation with contagious yawning
or contagious smiling, which captures
participants' perception of their dispositional
empathy. This is consist- ent with previous
studies failing to find a relation between trait
empathy and contagious yawning (Bartholomew
& Cirulli, 2014; Gottfried et al., 2015;
Haker & Rössler, 2009; Massen &
Gallup, 2017) and contagious smiling/laughing
(Franzen et al., 2018; Haker & Rössler,
2009). When examining performance on the Reading
the Mind in the Eyes Task to assess theory of
mind accuracy, we found no differences between
contagious yawners and non-yawners, which is
consistent with a study that used the same task
(Gottfried et al., 2015) but in contrast to a
study that used false belief and social faux pas
tasks (Platek et al., 2003). We did, however,
find greater accuracy on the Reading the Mind in
the Eyes Task for participants who were
contagious smilers relative to non- contagious
smilers. This may reflect that contagious
smiling is more closely related to higher-order
sociocognitive abilities, such as emotion
recognition and decoding the mental state of
others, relative to contagious yawning, although
we acknowledge that the effect size for this
finding is small.
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- We also examined a hypothesized behavioral
manifestation of empathy and theory of
mind&emdash;specifically, helping behavior
toward the experimenter. We found greater lev-
els of real-life helping behavior among
contagious yawners relative to non-contagious
yawners. This finding contrasts with one
previous study which found no differences
between yawners and non-yawners on donation
behavior (a type of prosocial behavior) to an
anonymous student and to a charity (Franzen et
al., 2018). Perhaps contagious yawning is not
directly related to some prosocial behaviors
(such as anonymous sharing of financial
resources), but the relation might be stronger
for real-life helping behav- ior that directly
benefits another person (Franzen et al., 2018).
Indeed, we specifically examined targeted
helping behavior, a form of prosocial behavior
that involves assisting someone to reach a goal
(Dunfield, 2014) and requires the understanding
of another's need (de Waal & Preston, 2017).
One of the functions of contagious yawning may
be promoting behavioral synchrony and group
vigilance (e.g., Casetta et al., 2021; Gal- lup,
2022; Preston & de Waal, 2002), which may
result in generation of cooperative responses
that are beneficial to the group, such s helping
behaviors. In our sample, this pattern of
helping behavior was not specific to contagious
yawning but was also evident for contagious
smiling. The mechanism for this may be similar
to that among conta- gious yawners and
consistent across contagion behaviors, but it
may also be due to the fact that contagious
smilers have higher socio-affiliative goals and
offer more help as a means to increase social
cohesion (Scott et al., 2022).
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- Finally, although there were some
differences in the sociocognitive correlates
across contagion behaviors, the likelihood of
yawning contagiously was related to the likeli-
hood of smiling contagiously, which may imply
some overlap in the underlying mecha- nisms for
behavioral contagion in general (Haker &
Rössler, 2009; Helt et al., 2021). Overall,
our findings suggest that contagious yawning may
be most closely related to emotional contagion,
which has been regarded by some as a basic and
automatic form of empathy (de Waal &
Preston, 2017; Hatfield et al., 1993;
Prochazkova & Kret, 2017), and may signal a
likelihood to help others. On the other hand,
contagious smil- ing may too be related to a
likelihood to help others, but also to other
higher-order fac- ets of social cognition such
as emotion recognition and mental state
decoding. Future work should continue to examine
correlates of empathy in relation to contagious
yawn- ing and other contagious behaviors, as
well as directly examine the motivational
factors of helping behavior that might be
different or similar across contagion
behaviors.
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