If you dream in colour, you're not alone: the majority of people today claim to have colourful dreams. But it wasn't always thus. Research conducted in the early part of the last century consistently found that people reported dreaming most often in black and white.
According to
Eva Murzyn at the University of Dundee, there are at least two possible explanations for this strange anomaly.
The first is methodological. The early studies tended to use questionnaires, whereas more modern studies use dream diaries (filled in upon rising in the morning) or so-called "REM-awakening", which involves interrupting people's dream-filled periods of sleep to find out what they were dreaming about. People's memories of their dreams are likely to be less accurate using the questionnaire approach and more likely to reflect lay beliefs about the form dreams generally take.
The second explanation has to do with black and white television and film. It's possible that the boom in black and white film and television during the first half of the last century either affected the form of people's dreams at that time, or affected their beliefs about the form dreams generally take.
According to Murzyn's findings, it's the explanation based on media exposure that carries more weight. She used both questionnaire and diary methods to study the dreams of 30 older (average age 64) and 30 younger people (average age 21).
The methodological technique made no difference to the type of dreams people reported. Crucially, however, across both questionnaires and diaries, the older participants (who had had significant early life exposure to black and white media) reported experiencing significantly more black and white dreams over the last ten days than the younger participants (22 per cent vs. 4 per cent).
Another finding was that older participants reported black and white dreams and colour dreams to be of equal vividness. By contrast, the younger participants reported that the quality of black and white dreams was poorer. This raises the possibility that the younger participants didn't really have any black and white dreams at all, but were simply labelling poorly remembered dreams as black and white.
Several awkward questions are left unanswered by this study. It's not clear if the older participants really are experiencing more black and white dreams or if it's their memories or beliefs about dreams that is influencing their reports. Related to this, we don't know if early exposure to black and white media has really affected the form of the older participants' dreams or simply their beliefs about dreams. Finally, if differences in media exposure really do explain the current results, we're still left with the question of how and why early exposure to black and white TV and film has had such an effect on the older participants, even after so many years of exposure to colour media and given that they live every day in a colourful world.
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E MURZYN (2008). Do we only dream in colour? A comparison of reported dream colour in younger and older adults with different experiences of black and white media Consciousness and Cognition. DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2008.09.002
译文:
年长的人更易做黑白梦
如果你的梦是彩色的，那你并不是特立独行：因为大多数人都做彩色的梦。不过也不尽全然。上世纪初的一项调查显示，多数情况下人们的梦是黑白的。
邓迪大学的Eva Murzyn说，对这个异常现象至少有两个合理解释。
首先是方法问题。早先的研究倾向于使用问卷调查而现代研究则使用“梦日记法”或者叫“睡眠觉醒”，也就是打断人们睡觉做梦的过程从而找出他们的梦境。在被问卷调查的时候人们对梦的记忆有欠精确，也更有可能反映出他们对一般做梦模式的理念。
第二个解释就不得不和黑白的电视电影相关了。很有可能的是，上世纪前期黑白电视电影的迅速发展不仅影响了那个时代人们的做梦形式，也影响着他们对一般做梦模式的理念。
Murzyn的发现表明，基于媒体曝光的这种解释更为重要（指黑白电影电视）。她同时对30为年长者（平均年龄64）和30为年轻人（平均年龄21）进行了问卷调查和日记法的试验。
这两种方法的实验对人们做梦的类型没有任何区别。然而重要的是，同样的问卷和日记，年长者（他们早期的生活暴露于黑白媒体）在过去的十天里所做的黑白梦要远多于年轻人。（这个比例是百分之22比百分之4）
另外一项发现是，年长参与者称他们的黑白梦与彩色梦一样生动。相反，年轻参与者们称黑白梦的质量相比彩色梦略低一筹。这一现象让我们质疑，其实年轻参与者们并没有做过真正的黑白梦而只是把那些自己记不清的梦定义成黑白的。
这项研究还遗留了些棘手的问题有待解决。年长者是否真的有更多黑白梦，又或者是他们的记忆和对梦的理念影响了他们的判断，这些都有待确定。与此相关的是，我们也不能肯定早期的黑白媒体是否真能影响他们的梦，又或者仅仅影响他们对梦的理念。最后，如果不同时代媒体曝光的不同真能解释现在的这些结果，那么我们还有问题：即便是年长者们处于彩色媒体与日常生活之下长达数年之久，那么早期的黑白电视电影为什么会对年长者们产生如此影响？又是如何产生呢？
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E MURZYN (2008). 我们只做彩色的梦吗？年轻人与年长者所做梦的颜色体现了意识与认知的对比。 DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2008.09.002