Quantcast
ZME Science
  • CoronavirusNEW
  • News
  • Environment
    • Climate
    • Animals
    • Renewable Energy
    • Eco tips
    • Environmental Issues
    • Green Living
  • Health
    • Alternative Medicine
    • Anatomy
    • Diseases
    • Genetics
    • Mind & Brain
    • Nutrition
  • Future
  • Space
  • Feature
    • Feature Post
    • Art
    • Great Pics
    • Design
    • Fossil Friday
    • AstroPicture
    • GeoPicture
    • Did you know?
    • Offbeat
  • More
    • About
    • The Team
    • Advertise
    • Contribute
    • Our stance on climate change
    • Privacy Policy
    • Contact
No Result
View All Result
ZME Science

No Result
View All Result
ZME Science
No Result
View All Result
Home Research Discoveries

How dreams affect people’s judgment and behavior

Mara Bujor by Mara Bujor
February 28, 2009
in Discoveries, Research, Studies

Back to the old, old times people believed dreams were messages sent from gods, so most of the times their actions were dramatically influenced b their mystical content. Wars were started, journeys begun , marriages arranged according to what the dreams suggested. And even though thousands of years have passed since then, our belief that dreams can influence our lives has still remained, and not only in remote communities. Let’s be frank: haven’t you ever had such a strange dream that you thought about it and its meaning the entire day?

Six different studies, involving about 1100 people, showed that this belief is shared by people belonging to different cultures and can manifest itself in all kinds of circumstances. According to Carey Morewedge, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, there is still a lot more for us to understand about the night productions of our mind.

One of the studies had the purpose of finding out exactly what people thought about dreams. So, 149 university students from USA, India and South Korea were asked to rate different theories about dreams. Most of the students, regardless of their culture, agreed that there is usually a hidden meaning connected to their lives and the world in them.

ADVERTISEMENT

Another study was meant to determine how much dreams could influence people’s waking behavior. 182 commuters at Boston station were asked to say what they would do if one out of four scenarios came true before a scheduled flight: a national threat level raised to orange, indicating that a terrorist attack might occur, their conscientious thinking about the possibility of an air crash,  a dream about such an accident or a plane crash which occurred on the same route. The dream proved to have a very strong impact, creating the same level of anxiety as a real crash.

Get more science news like this...

Join the ZME newsletter for amazing science news, features, and exclusive scoops. More than 40,000 subscribers can't be wrong.

   

In the end the researchers wanted to establish whether all dreams are perceived as equally meaningful or if they were influenced by waking desires and opinions. 270 men and women from USA took part in a short online survey in which they were asked to remember a dream which included a person they knew. More importance was given to pleasant dreams involving people who were liked by the subjects, but the unpleasant ones including a person they did not like were considered more meaningful.

This proves that people can give a certain meaning to a dream when it corresponds to their original beliefs. A similar experiment seemed to prove the same thing: believers would take into consideration any dream in which God spoke to them while agnostics would only do that if the demand was a pleasant one. In other words, a command to take a vacation would raise more interest than one to indulge oneself in self-sacrifice.

ADVERTISEMENT

Researchers have definitely started to draw some conclusions from these tests but there is still a lot more to study about the relation between people and their dreams. Even though most of us know a dream cannot predict the future, we still try to find their meaning, no matter what their content is.

Source: American Psychological Association

Mara Bujor

Mara Bujor

Mara is a student preparing to take the plunge and go to college. She's always been interested in anything new and intriguing as long as it made her think. She considers herself far from being a scientist but rather a seeker on his way to new and exciting answers and she's trying to make the internet educate people and show them the interesting part of science.

Follow ZME on social media

ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
  • Coronavirus
  • News
  • Environment
  • Health
  • Future
  • Space
  • Feature
  • More

© 2007-2019 ZME Science - Not exactly rocket science. All Rights Reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Coronavirus
  • News
  • Environment
    • Climate
    • Animals
    • Renewable Energy
    • Eco tips
    • Environmental Issues
    • Green Living
  • Health
    • Alternative Medicine
    • Anatomy
    • Diseases
    • Genetics
    • Mind & Brain
    • Nutrition
  • Future
  • Space
  • Feature
    • Feature Post
    • Art
    • Great Pics
    • Design
    • Fossil Friday
    • AstroPicture
    • GeoPicture
    • Did you know?
    • Offbeat
  • More
    • About
    • The Team
    • Advertise
    • Contribute
    • Our stance on climate change
    • Privacy Policy
    • Contact

© 2007-2019 ZME Science - Not exactly rocket science. All Rights Reserved.