Study title

This study investigated the degree to which social identity influenced the transmission of behaviour, specifically yawning behaviour. This was an online experimental study that recruited participants (through Prolific) that had voted to Remain in the EU Referendum. Their identity as a Remain supporter was made salient before presenting them with a video of a group of actors yawning at intervals, or not yawning, and which indicated that the actors were either Remain supporters (ingroup) or Leave supporters (outgroup) or gave no indication of their identity. Participant's behaviour was recorded using their computer's webcam and later coded for various measures of yawning behaviour. The data has not yet been analysed although preliminary inspection shows that only 10 of 305 participants demonstrated yawning behaviour. This study used relatively naturalistic stimuli compared with previous studies on the contagious transmission of behaviour that used headless actors performing the target behaviour continuously and calls into question the conclusions drawn by studies using relatively unnatural stimuli.How and why do behaviours spread from person to person? In particular, how does aggression and violent behaviour spread? When, as in 2011, riots began in London, why did they then occur in Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool? One of the most common ways of addressing such issues is through the notion of 'contagion'. The core idea is that, particularly in crowds, mere exposure to the behaviour of others leads observers to behave in the same way. 'Contagion' is now used to explain everything from 'basic' responses such as smiling and yawning (where the mere act of witnessing someone yawn or smile can invoke the same response in another) to complex phenomena like the behaviour of financial markets and, of course, rioting. What is more, laboratory experiments on the 'contagion' of simple responses (such as yawning) serve to underpin the plausibility of 'contagion' accounts...