A new study (Black and white TV generation have monochrome dreams) says that people 55 and over dream in black and white, while those under 25 dream in color, and the reason for this is television. People 55 and over grew up watching black and white TV, even if they switched to color sets the b/w imprinting had already been done on the brain. So, those 55 or older dream in black and white.
I don’t know if the study considered people in between, along with other factors, like personalities characteristics. I’m thinking creativity, or views and perceptions on spirituality, etc.
My husband Jim, is an artist. He’ll be 60 in a week or so. He always dreams in color, always has. He had a black and white set as a kid, before getting the big color TV. I’m a few months shy of 55, and I grew up with a black and white TV. I remember when we got the color set; a big day! Big old thing inside a cabinet. I was about ten years old.
I always dream in color as well. We’re both artists, writers and creative people, so I don’t know if that has anything to do with how we dream or not. I also have an unusually high rate of lucid dreams, hypnogognic and out of body experiences, all kinds of weird sleep-dream things.
And both of us have dreamed in color all our lives; I remember dreams when I was three, four and five years old, some as vivid as if I had them last night.
This last paragraph is interesting:
Miss Murzyn concedes it's still impossible to verify whether the dreams are actually in black-and-white, or whether media exposure somehow alters the way the mind reconstructs the dreams once we wake.
Brings up all kinds of questions. . .how can we ever know? Or, can we? Reminds me tangentially of what someone told me once, scoffing at my dreaming in color: "You don’t dream in color, you just think you do."
3 comments:
I shall be 60 next year, and we had a b/w TV when I was a child - before colour was introduced in the UK. But I, too, have always dreamed in colour, and I wouldn't consider myself to be creative :)
Kithra, You're creative; you write very well! That is very creative.
I remember one dream I had a few years ago; the dream was in color. I was dreaming about the house I grew up in. I walk into the living room, the tv is on, and what was playing on the screen was in black and white, but the rest of the dream was color.
Another dream where there was black and white; for some reason, it was gas pumps. The old fashioned kind; and I pull up, and the pumps has little tv like screens, and what was showing up was in black and white.
Both dreams were around the same time; I don't know what was going on in my life that I'd have that weird b/w "glitch" but there it is.
Wow. Amazing facts indeed. i haven't though these things would affect someone's dream. Its quite apparent that human dreams are actually their imagination of things they saw or perceived.
Good post. Keep it up.
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