Information Cascades & Yawning
Yawning, we all do it! Why? That is still a question that still doesn’t have a clear answer. There are multiple theories that try to explain the physical action. However, nothing has been proven one hundred percent factual, yet. Some theories include: regulating brain temperature, waking up your body, bringing oxygen into your bloodstream, and keeping your lung tissue lubricated. Something to note is that most of these theories have been in fact proven to be false or have no correlation to yawning. Currently, the only theory that holds some merit is that yawning is due to the brain trying to regulate brain temperature. It is commonly known that our brains operate to the best of our ability when we are at an optimal temperature which is usually room temperature. That being, the room is not too hot that you are sweating and not too cold that you are shivering. The theory goes on to explain that yawning helps cool our brains down from the increase in air circulation that goes on while we are yawning. Thus, when placed in a slightly warmer environment, our bodies react or can choose to react with a yawn.
Regardless of the reason and theories behind why we all yawn, there is an undeniable fact that it is contagious. This phenomenon relates to the discussion in class that we had about information cascades. Information cascades is the idea that people make decisions based off of other people’s decisions that were made before them. Here, if a person’s body made the decision to yawn, then other people are also going to yawn. Thus, regardless of their own private information/reason for not yawning they do so anyways as a relay to the first person yawning. This is very similar to the idea of “monkey see monkey do.” A person sees a yawn to which they react with a yawn.