People with psychopathic traits are less likely to yawn

The evidence that your personality largely determines whether or not you yawn is mounting.

We know all too well that yawning is contagious. You don’t even need to see or hear someone yawn, just the thought of it can be enough to feel an uncontrollable yawn yourself. Still shows a new study Now let’s say that yawning is not equally contagious for everyone. Because psychopaths appear to be a lot less susceptible to it.

Yawn

You can still be so rested: when someone else has to yawn, most of us are inclined to yawn along. And if you think about that a little more deeply, it’s actually quite odd. Scientists have been trying for years to better understand the function of yawning and what exactly underlies its contagiousness. “Yawning is a separate phenomenon,” behavioral researcher Jorg Massen tells in an interview Scientias.nl. “Still enough, we don’t know very much about it yet. This has led to public knowledge about this being dominated by outdated ideas, for example that it provides more oxygen; an assumption that has been refuted as far back as the 1980s.”

the real reason

What then is the function of yawning? “Yawning cools the brain,” Massen continues. “This ensures that we remain alert. By looking at ‘infectious yawning’ we can see how this state of being spreads through a group and how a group synchronizes. This could eventually have important applications in professions where supreme alertness is required.”

Not everyone yawns

As contagious as yawning is, not everyone yawns. Scientific research into yawning, for example, has shown that videos of people yawning typically induce a yawn in 30 to 60 percent of subjects. An interesting question is, of course, who exactly is less susceptible. Previous studies suggested that personality traits play a role. In addition, people with psychopathic traits in particular are said to be less sensitive to yawning. Psychopathy is characterized by, among other things, selfishness, not knowing fear and a lack of empathy. But the evidence for this hypothesis does not hold. “There have been some studies that point in that direction, but the results are often contradictory and the samples are small,” Massen says.

Study

To study the connection between personality and yawning more thoroughly, the team decided to go big this time. “We gathered a large group of people from different countries,” says Massen. In total, the team recruited 450 participants from 50 nationalities between the ages of 18 and 58. The subjects were instructed to watch videos of people yawning. They then reported on their own yawning responses and completed questionnaires mapping psychopathic personality traits.

Screenshots of a video that subjects were shown during the yawning study. Image: Utrecht University

Personality

The findings show that personality does indeed largely determine whether someone yawns or not. The best predictors of yawning are emotional and interpersonal personality traits. In addition, the theory that psychopaths are less sensitive to it has also been confirmed. “As expected, yawning was less contagious in subjects who scored higher on the psychopathy questionnaires,” says Massen.

Psychopaths

The results are in line with previous research showing that psychopathy can lead to less emotional attachment and social connection, which ultimately affects the susceptibility to infectious behavior. “People with psychopathic personality traits have trouble with social behavior,” Massen says. “In addition, it is more difficult for them to adapt to a group. So it doesn’t seem to go well in sync with the rest. The fact that yawning is therefore not so contagious for them seems to be a further elaboration of that.”

Strong connection

Thanks to the study, we are gaining a better understanding of the mechanisms involved in the action of the infectiousness of yawning. “But also vice versa in the physiology of psychopathic traits,” says Massen. “In addition, we have now shown with so many subjects around the world how strong the link is between psychopathic personality traits and yawning.”

Incidentally, you don’t have to worry right away if you have to yawn and your conversation partner won’t join in. “If a person doesn’t yawn with you, that doesn’t necessarily mean you have someone with psychopathic traits facing you,” Massen warns. Because despite the strong connection that emerged in the study, yawning mainly depended on the degree of fatigue that the subjects reported. “Someone who doesn’t yawn can simply not be tired enough,” concludes Massen.