I dare you not to yawn... then I dare you not to take what you read to heart.

Yawning is a surprisingly powerful act. Just because you read the word “yawning” in the previous two sentences—and the two additional “yawns” in this sentence—a good number of you will probably yawn within the next few minutes. Even as I’m writing this, I’ve yawned twice. If you’re reading this in a public space, and you’ve just yawned, chances are that a good proportion of everyone who saw you yawn is now yawing too, and a good proportion of the people watching the people who watched you yawn are now yawning as well, and on and on, in an ever-widening yawning circle… And finally, if you yawned as you read this, did the thought cross your mind—however unconsciously and fleetingly—that you might be tired? I suspect that for some of you it did, and which means that yawns can also be emotionally contagious. Simply by writing the word, I can plant a feeling in your mind.

(Malcom Gladwell: The Tipping Point, p.10)

Gladwell above addresses what he calls the stickiness factor of features of a social epidemic, i.e. why some ideas or things catch on and become trends and others just don’t stick. Yawning is clearly a ‘sticky’ concept. The reason I quote this paragraph is not just to pull a prank on anyone who loads this page. (I’ll admit the image of everyone yawning at the computer is making me laugh, only I can’t really laugh because I’m still yawning… but back to my point.) Consider this statement:

Simply by writing the word [yawn], I can plant a feeling [of tiredness] in your mind.

The fact that just reading a word can immediately trigger an unconscious and involuntary response tells you that the “emotional contagiousness” of written material is unbelievably powerful. Information processing isn’t about the text that you mindfully read; it isn’t even about the infamous subtext anymore. Understanding comes as a result of a knee-jerk emotional response to the very base meaning of the transmitted information. Every input translates into a cascade of automatic psychological reactors which we hardly control.

The reason this bothers me is because it greatly undercuts the positive effects of free speech. In an open exchange of ideas, every party has equal opportunity to state their case and refute their opponent’s. But emotional contagiousness makes any refutation a moot point, because the initial processing of the offending opinion has profound effects regardless of its validity.

So when one critic after another tear apart anti-Semitic or anti-Israeli positions, they try to make it impossible to rationally uphold the hateful argument. However, the layman who is exposed to the argument is not taken by either side of the debate as it doesn’t concern them. The casual observer’s response is an unsophisticated emotional reaction to the implicit triggers-- a result that is most insidious because it doesn't warrant reevaluation.

I keep thinking about the average newspaper reading Joe who reads an article on the Israel Lobby paper and then keeps reading to learn how academics spin the facts. This uninvolved but sincere citizen will come away from the article having caught two emotional bugs: (1) don’t trust Jews, and (2) don’t trust the academic elite. Even if the second argument is ultimately more convincing, the impression of the first remains. The worst part is that because the hateful feelings are barely persceptible, Joe will never even have to feel guilty about having those thoughts--and they'll always be there.

My point is: if I make you yawn and then convince you that you’re not actually tired--you’ll believe me that you’re not tired, but you still will have yawned!