Dream content: Individual and generic aspects.
Consciousness and Cognition December 1, 2007 DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2007.07.010 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Observational study Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Normal subjects |
| Topics | Dreaming |
| Key findings | Dream reports cannot be used to identify the individuals who produced them when personal identifiers are removed. |
Abstract
Dream reports were collected from normal subjects in an effort to determine the degree to which dream reports can be used to identify individual dreamers. Judges were asked to group the reports by their authors. The judges scored the reports correctly at chance levels. This finding indicated that dreams may be at least as much like each other as they are the signature of individual dreamers. Our results suggest that dream reports cannot be used to identify the individuals who produced them when identifiers like names and gender of friends and family members are removed from the dream report. In addition to using dreams to learn about an individual, we must look at dreams as telling us about important common or generic aspects of human consciousness.