Elisabetta Palagi, from the University of Pisa, Italy, who led the research, said of the results: “The degree of social bonding between individuals is important for contagious yawning, but so is gender. These two variables interact with one another to influence whether someone is likely to take part in contagious yawning.

“Women are much more empathic than men in several aspects of their lives and this has a biological basis because women have evolved for maternal care. Our question was: if females are more empathic than males, can we use contagious yawning as an indicator of this empathy? The answer is yes.”

The study concluded: “This result further supports the empathic ground of yawn contagion, in the light of the existing psychological, clinical and neurobiological evidence in favour of higher empathic abilities of women compared with men.”

So there you have it: science has basically confirmed we're simply better people. “No, no, nothing to do with my ill-advised weeknight pub crawl, I think you'll find I'm just really amazing at sharing and understanding the nuanced feelings of others.”

There's a flattering reason why women are twice as likely to catch a yawn than men