We catch yawns from people we know well
Reading our Research Digest is likely to make you yawn. Not because it is boring, but because yawning is so contagious that even reading about it can provoke the behaviour.
And the Digest has an item discussing research that suggests we are more likely to catch a yawn from relatives than acquaintances, and more likely to catch them from acquaintances than strangers. This is presumably because we have more empathy for people with whom we're emotionally intimate.
