Abstract
In their commentary, Gallup & Massen [1] criticize the fact that we did not consider ‘more than a dozen’ previous publications which did not report gender differences in human contagious yawning. We thank the authors for pointing out this issue and for giving us the possibility to provide a brief explanation on some aspects that are not as obvious as we thought. Our investigation was ethological and our framework was centred on behavioural studies also on non-human primates and other mammals. We therefore selected the articles that were relevant to our comparative and evolutionary approach. Gallup & Massen [1] state that the gender difference in yawn contagion detected in our study is a false positive and that the null effect is real. Unfortunately, the sample that they used to make this assumption (17 negative cases and one positive case) is incorrect and, consequently, so is their conclusion. The possibility to find a phenomenon relies on whether the sample and the methodology used are suitable to detect it. To retain the metaphor used by Gallup & Massen [1], you can flip a coin as many times as you want and never find what you expect if what you expect is to get a six. You should change the approach and roll a dice, instead. The results presented in the article by Palagi et al. [2] were based on naturalistic observations (and not on videos as it is said in table 1 of the commentary [1]) and the database also included bonobos, in which the sex of the trigger and not the sex of the responder tended to influence yawn contagion rates [3]. Therefore, it could not be used to evaluate which variables affect yawn contagion rates in humans only. Four of the articles mentioned in …
Highlights
In their commentary, Gallup & Massen [1] criticize the fact that we did not consider ‘more than a dozen’ previous publications which did not report gender differences in human contagious yawning
Gallup & Massen [1] state that the gender difference in yawn contagion detected in our study is a false positive and that the null effect is real
The results presented in the article by Palagi et al [2] were based on naturalistic observations and the database included bonobos, in which the sex of the trigger and not the sex of the responder tended to influence yawn contagion rates [3]
Summary
Gallup & Massen [1] criticize the fact that we did not consider ‘more than a dozen’ previous publications which did not report gender differences in human contagious yawning. There are solid reasons to believe that different methods and measurements can alter the expression of yawns in men versus women because the existence of methodology-related gender biases has already been highlighted in previous studies focusing on the expression of emotional states. If we exclude the articles that cannot be used for comparisons for the above-mentioned reasons (self-reported scores, static images, no proper control and non-blind procedures), only two articles of the initial pseudo-sample remain These two studies considered humans in their natural conditions: one [26] was carried out on all individuals to find out what factors influenced the presence and frequency of yawn contagion and the other [27] considered only the susceptible population to detect if other factors could affect the rate of yawn contagion when yawn contagion occurs. Based on the real available sample, and the related probability, it cannot be stated that our result is a false positive
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