Even while writing the title I realise how silly/weird it sounds as a theme to be writing upon. But think about it – have you ever been in a situation where you are attending a serious presentation / business proposal to the client or similar. You have done your part as a PM/TL by giving the first presentation, everybody else has done theirs, now the eventful event is coming to an end. The client is summarising it before the final wrap up and even if it’s not the most interesting of scandals, it’s not that boring too, your eyes are still wide open. And right here and now, your instincts disagree with you and you can’t suppress a yawn however discreet! In less than a minute, the person next you is doing the same thing and in another less than a minute the person next to him does the same and no, he is not half as discreet as you had been! And it sort of spreads like wildfire (well, almost!!)
And now between intermittent speech, the client knows this has started from somewhere. The whole chain now travels backward (only this time it’s with angry eyes instead of open mouths) and you see many accusing pairs resting on you with quiet questions in them. How you handle this situation might as well tell all that’s needed to be known about your real character. Do you give that sheepish smile of yours? Do you apologise that you had to stay up working late for this very presentation? Or you just look down jotting away meaningless blahs on to the notepad and blame this weird scientific mishap of yawning being a contagious occurrence? (Never mind what I did in my moment of truth, it was bad enough exposing myself to some 10 odd people in the conf. Room that day and I am not known for repeating the same mistake, no sir!)
So, this has to be science, right? How else do you explain this? Every night I go to put my 5 year old to bed, midway the story she yawns (poor thing has been tired, she’s so sleepy!) and just like night follows day y-a-w-n comes mine and it need not be that tough a day at work!! What’s the theory behind this? Thanks to Google and Wikipedia, I claim to have information at my fingertips, however limited!!
According to an article by the BBC the reasons for contagious yawning could be the following
It is a protective mechanism to make a group more alert
Or, it's a form of herding behaviour
Or a means of communicating sleeping times
Wow! The first two sound relevant more for the stone or pre stone age may be! I like the 3rd one. Very contemporary and closer to my reality. But that day at 3 o clock in the afternoon I hardly had in my mind to communicate sleep times with my fellow workers!! (See what I meant by limited information?)
A popular science portal scares you like nothing else – ‘Whether or not seeing someone else’s jaws gaping wide gives you the uncontrollable urge to join in may say more about your personality than you realize.’ So don’t blame me for not telling. Your yawning habits give away much more than you thought they did!!
There is another very scientific science article that says... oh never mind really. All this talk about yawning is very well capable of starting a notorious virtual yawning revolution and I do not want to be the one accused!! And yet, if you are not yawning by this part of this enlightening post, we actually are proving some big names in the yawning science wrong who say just by reading, thinking and talking about it, you go Y-A-W-N!!!!!!!!!!
