What Color Do You Dream?

If you dream in black and white, blame the TV and movies you watched when you were a child.

Researchers at Dundee University (Scotland) found that only about 4% of today's twenty-five year olds' dreams are in black and white.

But fifty-five year olds who only watched black and white media in their youth say about 25% of their dreams have no color. That's 3x the percent for fifty-five year olds who had access to color TV and movies in their childhood -- they report that only 7% of their dreams are monochrome.

The researchers aren't sure whether subjects are actually dreaming in black and white, or only recalling it that way, perhaps as they assemble their dream into a movie-like narrative. They theorize that the TV and movies make such an intense impression on young minds that the brain may effectively mix them up with actual dreams.

More dreams used to be in black and white. The UK's Telegraph reports that "Research from 1915 through to the 1950s suggested that the vast majority of dreams are in black and white, but the tide turned in the sixties, and later results suggested that up to 83 per cent of dreams contain some color."

--- We saw this at BoingBoing