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."











