Is yawning contagious?.
Will looking at yawning faces and reading about yawning make you yawn?
Original study
- Provine, R. R. (1986). Yawning as a stereotyped action pattern and releasing stimulus. Ethology, 72(2), 109–122. Source
- Provine, R. R. (1989). Faces as releasers of contagious yawning: An approach to face detection using normal human subjects. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 27(3), 211–214. Source
- Provine, R. R., & Hamernik, H. B. (1986). Yawning: Effects of stimulus interest. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 24(6), 437–438. Source
- Bartholomew, A. J., & Cirulli, E. T. (2014). Individual variation in contagious yawning susceptibility is highly stable and largely unexplained by empathy or other known factors. PLoS ONE, 9(3), e91773. Source
- Gallup, A. C., & Massen, J. J. M. (2016). There is no difference in contagious yawning between men and women. Royal Society Open Science, 3(9), 160174. Source
- Provine, R. R. (2005). Yawning. American Scientist, 93(6), 532–539. Source
Our adaptation
An adaptation of Provine's (1986, 1989) contagious yawning experiments. Participants are split into two groups with a personal seed. In the yawn group, hand-drawn faces appear one by one for 90 seconds and each yawns for about six seconds while a short text about yawning scrolls below; in the comparison group the same faces smile at the same moments and the text covers neutral topics. The participant presses 'I yawned' whenever they yawn (taps within 1.5 seconds count as one yawn). At the end, urge to yawn and suppression are asked.
Differences from the original study
- Drawings are used instead of videos of real people.
- The period is 90 seconds instead of five minutes.
- Yawns are self-reported; the page title tells everyone the topic.
Measured variables
The columns of the open data file. List fields are expanded into numbered columns (for example rt_60, est_3); JSON columns contain only numbers and fixed stimulus names.
| Column | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
cond | yawn | smile | Group: yawn = yawning faces, smile = comparison (smiling faces). |
yawns | JSON | Yawn times (ms). |
urge | integer | Urge to yawn: 0 none, 1 a little, 2 a lot. |
held | integer | Suppressed a yawn (1 = yes). |
away | integer | Time away from the tab (ms). |
stimulus_acts | JSON | Moments when faces yawned or smiled (ms; stimulus timing). |
n | integer | Number of yawns. |
any | 0 | 1 | Yawned at least once. |
first | number | Time of the first yawn (ms). |
clean | 0 | 1 | Did not leave the tab for more than 3 seconds (1 = clean). |
Columns present in every file (14)
row_id | string | Row code. Regenerated at random in every release; it does not identify a person and cannot be matched across releases or experiments. |
experiment | string | Short name of the experiment (URL slug). |
experiment_version | integer | Version of the answer format. For experiments whose format changed, only the current format is published. |
date | YYYY-MM-DD | YYYY-Www | YYYY-MM | Day the answer was given (Istanbul time). If fewer than 5 answers share the same day, language and device, it is coarsened to the ISO week, and to the month if that is still too few. |
date_precision | day | week | month | Precision of the date column. |
lang | tr | en | (boş) | Interface language. Language recording started in the first week of October 2026; for earlier answers it is known only in experiments whose stimuli depend on the language, and empty otherwise. |
device | desktop | mobile | tablet | (boş) | Device class reported by the browser (class only; browser details are neither stored here nor published). |
source | site | embed | Where the answer came from: the balabs site or the experiment embedded on another site. The embedding site is not published. |
mode | free | daily | challenge | race | session | (boş) | Play mode in scored experiments: free play, daily round, challenge, race room, experiment session. Empty for unscored experiments and for older answers that did not store it. |
color_vision | normal | rg | by | contrast | (boş) | In color-based experiments, the color vision mode the participant chose: normal, red-green, blue-yellow or high contrast. Stimuli are generated along different axes per mode, so compare within a mode. Empty for other experiments. |
first_play | 1 | Every row is a participant’s first play of this experiment (always 1). Replays are stored only as leaderboard scores and are not part of the open data. |
seen_before | yes | no | unsure | (boş) | Participant’s own report of whether they had seen this experiment or its known answer before (in experiments that ask). |
duration_s | number | Time from the start of the experiment to submitting the answer, in seconds (measured in the browser, 0.1 s). |
play_score | number | Leaderboard score of the first play (scored experiments; defined on the method card). Empty for unscored experiments. |
Exclusion criteria
The server requires the group, the yawn times (0–91.5 s, at most 60) and the answers to the questions. Only plays with clean = 1 enter the crowd comparison.
- Only each participant's first answer to this experiment; replays are not included.
- Simulated rows, bots, banned and sample accounts are not included.
- Answers before 3 October 2026 are not included (the first day the open data notice was live).
Scoring
This experiment has no leaderboard score. The main measure is the difference between groups in the share who yawned at least once.
Version notes
- October 2026
The interface language (lang) started being stored with each answer; for earlier answers it is known only in experiments whose stimuli depend on the language, and empty otherwise.