Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Dreams are meaningful



Credit: photobank.kiev.ua | Shutterstock

If you dream about winning the lottery or having an accident, should you prepare? If you answered "yes," you’re not alone, according to a study published in the February 2009 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The researchers ran six experiments, finding that not only do we put stock in our dreams, we also judge dreams that fit with our own beliefs as more meaningful than ones that go against the grain.

"Psychologists' interpretations of the meaning of dreams vary widely," study researcher Carey Morewedge, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, said in a statement. "But our research shows that people believe their dreams provide meaningful insight into themselves and their world."


In one study, 182 commuters in Boston imagined one of four scenarios had happened the night before a scheduled trip: national threat level was raised to orange; they consciously thought about their plane crashing; they dreamed about a plane crash; or a real plane crash occurred on the route they planned to take. Results showed a plane-crash dream was more likely to affect travel plans than either thinking about a crash or a government warning, while the crash dream also produced a similar level of anxiety as did an actual crash.

In another study, 270 men and women completed an online survey in which they were asked to remember a past dream they had about a person they knew. People ascribed more importance to pleasant dreams about a person they liked than they did a person they didn't like. And they were more likely to report a negative dream as more meaningful if it was about a person they disliked than one about a friend.

from : 7 Mind-Bending Facts About Dreams
Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience Managing Editor

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