Do People Still Report Dreaming in Black and White? An Attempt to Replicate a Questionnaire from 1942

Perceptual & Motor Skills, 96 (2003), 25-29.

Abstract

In the 1940’s and 1950’s, many people in the United States appear to have thought they dreamed in black and white. For example, Middleton (1942) found 70.7% of college sophomores reported "rarely" or "never" seeing colors in their dreams. The present student replicated Middleton’s questionnaire and found that students in 2001 reported a significantly greater rate of colored dreaming than the earlier sample, with only 17.7% saying that they "rarely" or "never" see colors in their dreams. Assuming that dreams themselves have not changed over this time period, it appears that one or the other (or both) groups of students must be profoundly mistaken about a basic feature of their dream experiences.

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Do People Still Report Dreaming in Black and White? An Attempt to Replicate a Questionnaire from 1942.  Or email me (eschwitz at domain- ucr.edu) for a copy of this paper.

Please note: My main paper on this topic is "Why Did We Think We Dreamed in Black and White?"

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