Gauging oneiromancy—the cognition of dream content and cultural transmission of (supernatural) divination
Religion, Brain & Behavior March 10, 2023 DOI: 10.1080/2153599x.2023.2172068 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Ethnographic study Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Nepalese Hindus |
| Topics | Dreaming |
| Keywords | Divination Dream Content measure theory Agency philosophy Affordance Cognition Epistemology Literature Cognitive psychology Psychotherapist |
| Citations | 5 |
| Key findings | Only omission of self-agency models in dream imagery significantly predicted dream communication and divination among Nepalese Hindus. |
Abstract
Dreaming is often connected with religious ideas and enjoys distinct epistemic status as a source of trusted information for divinatory practices—oneiromancy. These tendencies suggest the existence of a distinct content affordance relevance for dream divination, hypothesized in the “CARDD theory.” CARDD theory predicts that dreams containing nightmarish and threatening content, omission of self-agency models, bizarre and counterintuitive content, and SA imagery enhance the proclivity for dream communication and divination. Drawing upon ethnographic research among Nepalese Hindus, the purpose of the present article is to extend assumptions from cognitive and cultural transmission analysis of divination to the subcase of dream research and divination. The specific aims are (1) to quantify and compare dream contents according to their prevalence as described in CARDD theory, and (2) to test CARDD theory against the assumption that the dream contents have affordance value and provide motivation for dream communication and divination. According to the present data, however, only omission of self-agency models in dream imagery was significantly shown to predict dream communication and divination—a result that supports the idea that the formal features of “ostensive detachment” (Boyer, 2020; Mercier & Boyer, 2021) are decisive factors in cultural transmission of divinatory practices.
Comparable studies
Other qualitative studies on dreaming, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Other as a Nightmare: The Israeli-Arab Encounter as Reflected in Children's Dreams in Israel and the West Bank Jewish and Arab fifth to seventh graders living in various settings in Israel and the... | 1989 | Qualitative content analysis | n = 212 |
| Nonwaking Responses to Waking Stressors: Dreams and Nightmares1 Men from the cohort eligible for military duty during the Vietnam Conflict, varying in... | 1990 | Survey interview study | n = 442 |
| Communing with the Gods: The Dreaming Brain in Cross-cultural Perspective | 2011 | Phenomenological study | |
| Partial memory reinstatement while (lucid) dreaming to change the dream environment. Lucid dreamers | 2020 | Qualitative study | |
| Strange themes in pandemic dreams: Insomnia was associated with more negative, anxious and death‐related dreams during the COVID‐19 pandemic Global survey participants | 2022 | Longitudinal mixed-methods study | n = 2,240 |
Citations in the library
Cited by 2
Cites 18
- The threat simulation theory in light of recent empirical evidence: A review The American Journal of Psychology April 1, 2009
- Altered States of Consciousness within a General Evolutionary Perspective: A Holocultural Analysis Behavior Science Research August 1, 1977
- Dreams, emotions, and social sharing of dreams Cognition & Emotion December 14, 2007
- Sleep and Dreaming in the Predictive Processing Framework Iris (Roma Tre University) 2017
- Communing with the Gods: The Dreaming Brain in Cross-cultural Perspective Time and Mind 2011
and 13 more in the library