Tag Archives: psychology

Science? – In Your Dreams

I’ve just discovered the University of California Santa Cruz’s website Dreambank.net; a fascinating repository of dreams that’s also a research tool.

woman sleeping with book

Developed by Adam Schneider and William Domhoff in the Psychology Department, the tool’s content of over 25,000 dream reports is drawn from a variety of sources and studies, capturing the memories of individuals aged from 7 to 74.

I’m sure there’s a lot of serious and not so serious fun to be had on this site, but for now I’ve just run a basic analysis to find the proportion of total dreams including the word ‘science’ at least once.

The results:

1. Of 25222 dreams, 86 mentioned ‘science’ (0.3%)

2. The group or individual with the highest proportion of dreams referencing ‘science’ was Bay Area Girls (4-6 graders). i.e. 13 of 234 dreams = 5.6%

3. The second highest proportion was reported by male Psychologist Melvin. i.e. 5 of 128 dreams = at 3.9%

dream search box
Dream search box (source: dreambank.net)

I then ran three other words that came to mind with stuff of dreams potential, and got these results expressed as the percentage of dreams in the total sample mentioning the word once or more:

– War 31%

– Sex 3.7%

– Science 0.3%

– Climate  <0.1%

So what does it all mean for science?   And if dreams tell us what’s really on our minds (do they?) – what are we in for?

Well, with this as a starter, I’ll leave you and the tabloids to draw your own conclusions; I’m sure there are some great headlines to be extracted.   But I would say that as a whole we appear not to be losing too much sleep over science, and the future of Silicon Valley looks a lot more assured than that of the planet as a whole.

For myself I can’t remember having had any dreams specifically about science; but I’m sure I must have; so from now on I’m going to make an effort to track them.  And of course if you’d like to share any of your own sciencey dreams – feel free to add them to the comments – especially if they include science, war, sex, and climate combined ;-).

Other Info

Here’s the detail for the science search.  For more information on the groups and individuals, and the potential to perform more detailed statistical analysis, visit dreambank.net.

And, credit where due; I (@physicus) originally learnt of dreambank.net from a tweet by @christianbok via @rowanNS.

Search results for 'science' in dreams

Faces

Richard Wiseman has just blogged on how some people see faces in inanimate objects.  Check out the blog here, but first, what about this.

Make my Day
Make my Day

Richard would explain this in terms of psychology and interpretation.  But it’s clear this gate guardian of my (then) fiances’s flat in San Francisco is keen-eyed, shod, armed – and DANGEROUS.

Heat Friends And Influence People

If you want to get close to someone, give them a nice hot cup of tea. Or anything warm for that matter.

Nice Hot Cuppa
Can't beat a nice hot Cuppa

New research suggests that when someone experiences physical warmth, they develop increased feelings of interpersonal warmth – and it all happens without them even knowing.

Tests by researchers at Yale University and the University of Colorado at Boulder showed that when given a hot cup to hold, a subject would judge another person to have a ‘warmer’ personality. In another test, application of a thermal pad resulted in the person tending to choose a gift for a friend rather than themselves.

The key to this behaviour is the discovery that a part of the brain, the insular cortex, looks after both the physical and psychological versions of warmth information, with feelings like trust, empathy, guilt and embarrassment also implicated.

So there you go – yet more evidence that we are completely out of control of ourselves. Ho Hum…..

P.S. Only use a Los Alamos mug if you are looking for that ‘extra warmth’.

More info. in Science Vol.322.No5901.pp.606-607