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Chimpanzees' contagious yawning evidence of empathy, not just sleepiness, study shows
Date:4/6/2011

ore sensitivity for members of the same social group.

The results raise the question of whether contagious yawning among humans shows the same biases: favoring members of the same social group over different social groups.

The authors note one complication: chimpanzees live in small communities where unfamiliar individuals are by definition seen as members of a separate social group. In contrast, humans do not necessarily see strangers as belonging to an "outgroup." For this reason, the in-group/out-group distinction may be more absolute in chimpanzees than in humans. Chimpanzees in the wild are known to be extremely hostile to external groups, which probably adds to the effects found in this study.

The authors say that contagious yawning could be a window into social and emotional connections between individuals, and suggest that insight into barriers to chimpanzee empathy may help break down those barriers for humans.

"Empathy is difficult to measure directly because it is a largely internal response: mimicking the emotional response of another. Contagious yawning allows for a measurement of empathic response that is purely behavioral, and thus can be applied more widely," Campbell writes. "Anyone who wants to increase human empathy towards outsiders should consider that techniques to this effect could be tested out on chimpanzees and other animals."


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Contact: Holly Korschun
hkorsch@emory.edu
404-727-3990
Emory University
Source:Eurekalert

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