It was once believed that most people had mostly black and white dreams, and colored dreaming was thought to be related to psychological problems. However, science has since debunked these myths, The Washington Post wrote.
Although people often dream in black and white, many of them have mostly colored dreams. A 2017 study showed that research participants saw color in nearly 50 percent of their dreams, while black and white accounted for only 10 percent. For the remaining 40 percent, respondents could not recall whether they saw any colors or not.
The tendency to dream in shades of gray or in color can be partly influenced by age and when people grew up. Up until the 1950s, the vast majority of respondents reported that they only had occasional, rare, or never colorful dreams. This probably changed with the advent of color television.
A 2008 study found that people over the age of 55 – who may have grown up without color television – said they saw color in only about 34 percent of their dreams, compared to twice that number for people under 25. When asked if they remember the colors in their dreams after waking up, almost 18 percent of people from the first group and 15 percent from the second answered negatively.
Not being able to remember whether we have colorful dreams may indicate a focus on other aspects of dreaming. “It may be a matter of attention and memory,” says Deirdre Barrett, a psychologist who studies dreams at Harvard Medical School and author of The Committee of Sleep, a book on the role of dreams.
As an example, he cites that a customer after dinner in a restaurant is unlikely to remember the color of the waiter’s shirt. It does not follow that the shirt had no color, but that the customer did not notice it and therefore did not remember it. Barrett believes that the sleeping and waking worlds are similar in this respect.
And this can become more and more apparent as you get older. In 2011, researchers published the results of two surveys 16 years apart. They showed that about 80 percent of participants under the age of 30 confirmed the color in their dreams, compared to about 20 percent for those in their 60s.
In general, recalling a dream, including all the details, declines with age, Barrett concludes.
Source: www.tyden.cz
