Do you dream in black and white? If so, the chances are you are over 55 and were brought up watching a monochrome television set.
New research suggests that the type of television you watched as a child has a profound effect on the colour of your dreams.
While almost all under 25s dream in colour, thousands of over 55s, all of whom were brought up with black and white sets, often dream in monchrome – even now.
“What is even more interesting is that before the advent of black and white television all the evidence suggests we were dreaming in colour.”
Research from 1915 through to the 1950s suggested that the vast majority of dreams are in black and white but the tide turned in the sixties, and later results suggested that up to 83 per cent of dreams contain some colour.
Since this period also marked the transition between black-and-white film and TV and widespread Technicolor, an obvious explanation was that the media had been priming the subjects’ dreams.
However it was always controversial and differences between the studies prevented the researchers from drawing any firm conclusions.
But now Miss Murzyn believes she has proved the link. She re-looked at the old studies and combined them with a survey of her own of more 60 people, half of which were over 55 and half of which were under 25.
I call BS.
“I call BS.”
I’m certainly suspicious, but dreams are usually a mirror of reality. Back when I worked retail we had a week long inventory once a year. During that time I would have dreams where I would do nothing but count. My reality influenced my dreams.
It’s not a stretch to think that if I watched a lot of black and white TV, that my dreams would also be influenced in a similar way.
And it would explain the “fact” that was constantly told to us as kids, “We only dream in black and white.” As kids we knew it was BS, because we dreamed in color, we also grew up with brightly colored shows such as the Brady Bunch and the Monkees. But the adults at the time didn’t and accepted the “fact” as true, because they did dream in black and white.
Right. And my grandmother only dreams in vaudeville.
I dream almost every night and right now I can’t remember if they are in color or not. I’ll have to remember about that.
Ever hear of “directed dreaming?” I did it before learning of the concept. You enter a semi conscious state where you are dreaming but can “direct” what happens in the dream like a director on a movie set.
You can buy special glasses that help you achieve this. I fell into it when trying to sleep on airplanes.
Unnerving really. Should I walk over there and put my hand on the stewardesses breast===OR AM I NOT DREAMING?
Dreams/visions/reality/memory. All brain chemistry.
Interesting theory, but this assumes that TV is the primary influence in someone’s life. For a normal individual, I’d like to think that real life is the primary influence… not television.
Rome, 210 AD. Every slave owner and slave dreamt in full color, wrap-around peripheral vision, dynamic 3D and 360° surround sound.
We are only now beginning to catch up.
As a child I heard this old chestnut about dreaming in B&W and because it had never occurred to me to dream that way, I was astonished to hear people saying they did when I asked.
I thought at the time it must have been due to BW movies and TV. But there were numerous dreams where the color of something was important to the plot.
Orange juice NEVER was a blotch of gray.
I’m old school. Roman dreams and all. But I suspect that the suggestion that dreams may be colorless plants the suggestion and people who have dreams with no particular outstanding color component are swayed to report a yea on the question—artificially.
More of an example of directed consciousness tainting a tenuous memory.
Hey Bobbo! Me too!
I can remember select dreams from way back and they have always, without exception, been in color.
I can also do “directed dreaming”. It first happened when I was dreaming about the scene from the “Wizard of Oz” when they were first in front of the “Great Oz”. The dream was so scary that I “directed” myself out of it, and I haven’t had a nightmare since.
Great minds dream alike?
PS, I wonder how many other kids had nightmares from watching the Wizard of Oz?
NO HD is close to Human eye yet!
Nothing is TV/Imax/film is better then anybody own imagination after reading a good book!
The whole world used to be black and white! When people talk about old stuff I imagine about it in Black and White or Technicolor color LOL!
#7–Ah Yea==we could google it but from various articles I’ve read you can think about what kind of dream you want before you go to bed and chances are that is what you will “start” to dream about==then you change it as you wish.
As I fell into this while on airplanes, I always started variably with whatever the dream was. Being younger in those days, whatever the dream was–say the Wizard of Oz–I would just direct the dream that 3 hot babes would come walking down the yellow brick road==and so they would.
Note to self–get back into “directed dreaming.”
John McCain dreams in charcoal etchings.
Obama dreams in colors beyond the ability of normal human perception.
I dream in sepia.
My dreams are very detailed.
BS,
If this was so then people would have dreamed in hieroglyphs in ancient Eygpt.
Cursor_
TV exposes our brains to events and traumas that would normally take a hundred lifetimes to experience by normal means. It most definitely shapes and molds and is why the nazis developed it in the 30’s – mass mind control and moral suasion.
It makes people believe we landed on the moon FFS. NVM dreams, it messes up our reality.
What Bobbo is talking about (in #4) is lucid dreaming. Anyone can do this with practice. Here’s a site with information about it.
I’m 64 and I’ve always dreamed in color. I think the post is bogus. It’s just that most people don’t remember their dreams that well. If you try to remember your dreams right after you wake up, they will be much clearer.
If this were true, I would have commercials interrupt my dreams every 10 minutes with compressed audio, or at least popup ads.
I dream of Jeanie.
It’s been a few years but what I remember from my psychology class was that we dream in B&W. Important aspects of the dream will be in color but usually there would only be one color at a time. Thus yes, the orange juice would be orange as long as it was the object of the dream but would quickly fade to gray or disappear if something else became the center or object of the dream.
The mind does not multi task well. It can focus on one thing at a time and anything else is held in the minds recesses.
My thought is that when we wake we remember the most important parts of the dream and color will be recalled in the degree of its importance. We can remember eating the eggs and ham or that they were green, but not necessarily both, depending upon how important each facet is to our lives.
Another example would be you can see the forest or a tree, but not both.
I dream in Tivo.