Early descriptions of dreams and papers on the nature of dreaming suggest that color was commonly present in dreams before the 20th century (Schwitzgebel, 2003). Before the development of scientific psychology, even scholars such as Aristotle and Descartes, who were at some point interested in dreams, generally acknowledged or assumed that dreams were in color. However, studies from 1915 through to the 1950s suggested that the vast majority of dreams are in black and white, which many people attribute to the rise of black and white media. On the other hand, studies from the 60s and later (when colored media was prominent) suggested that up to 83% of dreams contain some color (Robson, 2008).

The Study:

Eva Murzyn (2007) focused on whether the influence of black and white media had any affect on the reported color of dreams. The subjects (30 females, 30 males; half under 25, the other half over 55) were asked:

· the age at which the participant was first exposed regularly to black and white media and/or colored media (on a following scale: 0–3 years old, 4–6, 7–10, 11–14, 15 years and over, never)

· the number of hours spent currently watching TV

· the percentage of programs watched in black and white.

For 10 days, the participants were asked to record the number of dreams they remembered when they woke up and answered six yes-no questions about the color type of each dream. The answers to these questions allowed Murzyn to classify the dream into on of four main categories: color, grayscale, mixed (containing both colored and grayscale elements) and neither.

The Results:

Out of the 30 participants under the age of 25;

• All had frequent access to color television and film by the age of 6, most of them having such access before the age of 4.
• Their results indicated that 21 participants had colored dreams, 6 had dreams with a mixture of both color and grayscale and 3 were unsure.

Out of the 30 participants over the age of 55;

· None of the participants had access to color media before the age of 7, and 22 participants indicated they had gained access to black and white media before colored media.

· Their results showed that only 8 people indicated they dream in color, 4 said they only have grayscale dreams and 12 mentioned having both types.

The overall results revealed that people who were exposed to black and white media before color media experienced more grayscale dreams than people with no such exposure.

Even in the group with black and white media experience, the average percentage of grayscale dreams experienced in this experiment was much lower than the proportions typically reported in the 1940’s and 1950’s. This difference is most likely due to the influence from color media, which has been the dominant media type for at least the last 40 years. Without black and white film media, scholars such as Aristotle and Descartes might not have thought that something colored may perhaps be represented in the mind as black and white. It would be natural to assume that since the things dreamed about are colored in real life, they should be colored in dreams. However, with the rise black and white media in the early twentieth century, people recognized that the images in their dreams resembled the images in black and white media.

Controversy:

Murzyn (2007) implies that the older group, now are over 55 years of age, has retained at least some of their grayscale dreaming patterns despite a long and intense color media exposure. However, the older participants recalled dreams less often than the younger group. Their dream reports also contained significantly less visual imagery which could lead to mislabeling dreams as grayscale. Because each participant was asked to record the color type of their dream the moment they wake up, many results could be also skewed due to memory errors.

Every day a person with the ability to see observes the world around them in full color. Because of this, Schwitzgebel (2003) suggests that it seems odd to suppose that what an individual sees in a movie or on the television screen would affect whether they dream about them in color. Despite their cultural significance, it seems unlikely that film and television would transform the dreams we have of the colored world around us into dreams of black and white. He believes that it may be more reasonable to assume, that the reporting of dreams that changed rather than their content.

Resources:

Murzyn, E. (2008). Do we only dream in colour? A comparison of reported dream colour in younger and older adults with different experiences of black and white media. Consciousness and Cognition, 17(4), 1228-1237.

O'Connor, A. (2008). The claim: Some people dream only in black and white. Retrieved March 1, 2008, from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/health/02real.html?_r=2&ref=health

Okada, H. (2005). Individual differences in the range of sensory modalities experienced in dreams. Dreaming, 15(2), 106-115.

Robson, D. (2008, ). ^{It's black and white: TV influences your dreams}. Message posted to http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14959-its-black-and-white-tv-influences-your-dreams.html

Schwitzgebel, E. (2001). Why did we think we dreamed in black and white? Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 33(4), 649-660.

Schwitzgebel, E. (2006). Do we dream in color? cultural variations and skepticism. Dreaming, 16(1), 36-42.