Yawning and Empathy

animated chimps yawning

I’ve posted before about Science Cafes (U.S. Version) (UK version) (The World): Meet scientists in a bar or cafe, and chat with them about the work they do.

The one here in Atlanta meets once a month or so. You eat dinner and then listen to a scientist talk about his work. (You can subscribe to the podcast and listen to the audio.)

The last one I went to was with Matthew Campbell, who is trying to determine whether (and to what degree) animals experience empathy. The problem is that we can’t ask them how they feel. We can’t even do simple state of mind experiments that rely on questions and answers. And we can’t strap them into PET scans and expect them to remain completely still while we play sounds or show video.

We can watch what animals do. We can say that they seem to being doing altruistic things. But we can’t really say whether they’re empathic. So the scientists in question are trying to find a quantitative way to find empathy in animals.

Here’s an interesting fact: Autistic humans are less likely to experience contagious yawning. So are schizophrenics.

The scientists wondered whether people who are more likely to be empathic are also more likely to experience contagious yawning. Since chimps experience contagious yawning, there may be some way to make a link between their yawns and their empathy.

The research is still being done. At the moment, all they’ve done is measure the degree to which each chimp in the study experiences contagious yawning. Then they’ll see whether those with the highest levels also display the most altruistic behavior.

A few years from now you may read an article in the paper about the findings.

Some links to articles about the ongoing research: BBC; The Smithsonian; The Telegraph.

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