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EEOB 3310 Heather Nootbaar

Annotated Bibliography

1. De Waal, F. B. (2008). Putting the altruism back into altruism: the evolution of empathy. Annu. Rev. Psychol., 59, 279-300.

This article discusses the evolution of empathy and altruism. In order to determine the roots of altruistic behaviors, empathy was used because it is an ideal mechanism. There is evidence that this mechanism is phylogenetically ancient. The perception of the emotional state of another activates a shared representation, which causes the observer a similar emotional state. It is important to understand the concept of empathy and its origins in order to see how it applies to humans and other animals, as well as if it is evolutionarily significant.

2. Provine, R. R. (2005). Yawning: the yawn is primal, unstoppable and contagious, revealing the evolutionary and neural basis of empathy and unconscious behavior. American scientist, 532-539.

This article is all about the yawn. It discusses various types, but most importantly, it brings up the idea that it can be very helpful in revealing evolutionary questions. The article addresses the yawns roots in sociality. For example, the idea that the underlying mechanism of the contagious response is likely involved with a neurological detector; but it not involved in the conscious desire to replicate the act. The article also touches on the idea that yawning’s evolutionary history can be seen in its occurrences around the animal kingdom, considering most vertebrates yawn. But, contagious yawning has only really been observed in primates and humans. The observed disappearance of yawning in some neurological and psychiatric disorder also suggests that contagious yawning is a measure of sociality.

3. Romero, T., Ito, M., Saito, A., & Hasegawa, T. (2014). Social Modulation of Contagious Yawning in Wolves. PloS one, 9(8), e105963.

This article expands upon the idea that contagious yawn is linked to empathy. This evidence is a tool that can be used to examine the root of empathy in animal evolution. Many studies have found a weak link to yawn and empathy outside of primates. But recently, it was found that domestic dogs exhibit this ability when exposed to human yawns. To understand if the reasoning behind their ability was linked to the evolutionary history of mammals or evolved as a result of domestication, researchers took a look at wolves. They found that wolves are capable of yawn contagion, which suggests that the ability is a common ancestral trait shared by other mammals.

4. Palagi, E., Leone, A., Mancini, G., & Ferrari, P. F. (2009). Contagious yawning in gelada baboons as a possible expression of empathy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(46), 19262-19267.

This article also expands upon the idea of empathy and if it is uniquely human or shared with other primates. In this study, baboons were susceptible to the yawning contagion, especially with those they were socially close to. This is unique in the fact that emotional proximity rather than spatial proximity was what caused the yawn contagion. These findings revealed that there are emotional connections between individuals and through this phenomenon the baboons could be another building block in for actual empathy.

5. Campbell, M. W., & De Waal, F. B. (2011). Ingroup-outgroup bias in contagious yawning by chimpanzees supports link to empathy. PloS one, 6(4), e18283.

This article surrounded the study of ingroup-outgroup bias among chimpanzees. They used the idea that contagious yawning is linked to empathy. They studied 23 chimpanzees and if empathy does underlie contagious yawning they expected to see ingroup-outgroup bias by yawning more in response to watching ingroup member yawn than outgroup. The results provided further support that contagious yawning is a measure of empathy, which may be very useful for evolutionary biologists.