Research by Robert Provine, professor of psychology, has recently been cited in a variety of news outlets.
On December 1, the Wall Street Journal published a story on “The Unsolved Mystery of Why You Just Yawned” in which they delve into research performed for Provine’s latest book, Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping and Beyond.
“So what is known about yawning? Dr. Provine—who is a champion of what he calls ‘sidewalk neuroscience,’ experiments anybody can do at home without special equipment—has spent years teasing out the details of yawning, as recounted in his recent book ‘Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping and Beyond.’ By asking people to pinch their noses or grit their teeth while yawning he found that ‘the motor program…will not run to completion’ unless you can inhale through your mouth and gape your jaw wide,” the author wrote.
Provine’s research was also part of a November 23 Forbes story on “The Black Friday Experiment: Mind Control and Mass Hysteria Gone Viral.” ”Humans are social animals and like all social animals have fantastic mechanisms for synching up behavior. If I start yawning, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll start yawning. If I start puking, you’ll most likely yak along. Most of the time, as Dr. Robert Provine explains in [his book] Laughter, this is a good thing,” the author writes, but then goes on to explain that these same mechanisms can cause us to “go from mimetic transmission to mass hysteria in lickety-split.”
Provine was also quoted in a November 26 CTV story entitled “Why Hiccup? Basis of Biological Oddity Is Unclear.” “Hiccupping has no obvious function. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have one. But it hasn’t been discovered,” says Provine in the story.
Tags: CAHSS, Psychology
