Do Dreams Affect Decision Making?

Need to sleep on that big decision? Your dreams might influence your final choice, suggests new research.

Scientists disagree as to what extent dreams reflect subconscious desires, but new research reported in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Vol. 96, No. 2) concludes that dreams do influence people's decisions and attitudes.

Social psychologists Carey Morewedge, PhD, at Carnegie Mellon University, and Michael Norton, PhD, at Harvard University, conducted studies to find out how people respond to their dreams. Their study of people in the United States, South Korea and India found that 56 percent, 65 percent and 74 percent of respondents, respectively, believe that dreaming reveals hidden truths.

The researchers then wanted to know whether dreams could influence people's decision-making. They asked 182 Boston commuters to consider which of four scenarios would most likely change their flight plans: the government raising the national threat level; consciously imagining a plane crash; learning an actual flight crashed along your route; or dreaming about a plane crash. Commuters said the dream would be just as unsettling as a real crash and more unsettling than consciously imagining a crash or a government warning.

People also seem to selectively find meaning in their dreams based on their biases, Morewedge says. In another study, the researchers asked people of assorted religious beliefs to imagine that God spoke to them in a dream and told them either to travel the world or go work in a leper colony. The very faithful said that either dream would be meaningful to them, while the more agnostic said the travel commandment might be somewhat meaningful, but not the leper colony commandment.

These experiments gauge people's attitudes, not their behaviors, but Morewedge thinks one follows the other. In a different study, he found that 68 percent of people believe their dreams can predict the future. If they believe that, and they have a dream that weighs heavily on them, "it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy," Morewedge says.

https://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/04/dream.aspx

https://www.apa.org/index.aspx

9 Things You Did Not Know About Dreams...

Everyone dreams—every single night—and yet we tend to know so little about our dreams. Where do they come from? What do they mean? Can we control them and should we try to interpret them? We spoke to the dream experts to bring you nine surprising facts about dreams. Read before snoozing.
1. Dreaming can help you learn.
If you’re studying for a test or trying to learn a new task, you might consider taking a nap or heading to bed early rather than hovering over a textbook an hour longer. Here’s why: When the brain dreams, it helps you learn and solve problems, say researchers at Harvard Medical School. In a study that appeared in a recent issue of Current Biology, researchers report that dreams are the brain’s way of processing, integrating and understanding new information. To improve the quality of your sleep—and your brain’s ability to learn—avoid noise in the bedroom, such as the TV, which may negatively impact the length and quality of dreams.

2. Just like men, women can have orgasms during dreams.
Did you think only men experience this phenomenon? Not true, says Barbara Bartlik, MD, a psychiatrist and sex therapist in New York. Warning, further reading may produce blushing: “Women have orgasms during their sleep, just as men do,” she says. “These orgasms often accompany erotic dreams, but they also may occur during dreams of a nonerotic nature.” When women dream, she says, it’s not uncommon for their genitals to become engorged and lubricated. “This occurs during REM sleep, which happens several times during the night,” she says. A similar thing happens to men. “Men get erections during REM sleep, whether or not the man is having an erotic dream.”

3. The most common dream? Your spouse is cheating.
If you’ve ever woken up in a cold sweat after dreaming about your husband’s extramarital escapade with your best friend, you’re not alone, says Lauri Quinn Loewenberg, a dream expert, author and media personality. “The most commonly reported dream is the one where your mate is cheating,” she says. Loewenberg conducted a survey of more than 5,000 people, and found that the infidelity dream is the nightmare that haunts most people—sometimes on a recurring basis. It rarely has anything to do with an actual affair, she explains, but rather the common and universal fear of being wronged or left alone.

4. You can have several—even a dozen—dreams in one night.
It’s not just one dream per night, but rather dozens of them, say experts—you just may not remember them all. “We dream every 90 minutes throughout the night, with each cycle of dreaming being longer than the previous,” explains Loewenberg. “The first dream of the night is about 5 minutes long and the last dream you have before awakening can be 45 minutes to an hour long.” It is estimated that most people have more than 100,000 dreams in a lifetime.

5. You can linger in a dream after waking.
Have you ever woken up from such a beautiful, perfect dream that you wished you could go back to sleep to soak it all up (you know, the dream about George Clooney?)? You can! Just lie still—don’t move a muscle—and you can remain in a semi-dreamlike state for a few minutes. “The best way to remember your dreams is to simply stay put when you wake up,” says Loewenberg. “Remain in the position you woke up in, because that is the position you were dreaming in. When you move your body, you disconnect yourself from the dream you were just in seconds ago.”

6. Even bizarre dreams can be interpreted.
While it can be hard to believe that an oddball dream about your mother, a circus and a snowstorm can have any bearing on real life, there may be symbolism and potential meaning to be mined in every dream—you just have to look for it, says Harvard-trained psychotherapist Jeffrey Sumber. "The meaning of our dreams oftentimes relates to things we are needing to understand about ourselves and the world around us,” he says. Instead of shrugging off strange dreams, think about how they make you feel. “We tend to dismiss these dreams due to the strange components, yet it is the feeling we have in these dreams that matters most,” he explains. “Sometimes the circus and the snowstorm are just fillers that allow us to process the range of emotions we feel about our mother and give us the necessary distraction so we can actually experience that spectrum of emotion.”

7. Recurring dreams may be your mind’s way of telling you something.
Do you have the same nightmare over and over again? Loewenberg suggests looking for underlying messages in recurring dreams so that you can rid yourself of them. For example, a common recurring nightmare people have involves losing or cracking their teeth. For this dream, she recommends that people think about what your teeth and your mouth represent. “To the dreaming mind, your teeth, as well as any part of your mouth, are symbolic of your words,” she says. “Paying attention to your teeth dreams helps you to monitor and improve the way you communicate.”

8. You can control your dreams.
The premise of the new movie Inception is that people can take the reins of their dreams and make them what they want them to be. But it may not just be a Hollywood fantasy. According to the results of a new survey of 3,000 people, dream control, or “lucid dreaming” may be a real thing. In fact, 64.9 percent of participants reported being aware they were dreaming within a dream, and 34 percent said they can sometimes control what happens in their dreams. Taking charge of the content of your dreams isn’t a skill everyone has, but it can be developed, says Kelly Bulkeley, PhD, a dream researcher and visiting scholar at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkley, California. The technique is particularly useful for people who suffer from recurring nightmares, he says. Dr. Bulkeley suggests giving yourself a pep talk of sorts before you go to sleep by saying: “If I have that dream again, I’m going to try to remember that’s it’s only a dream, and be aware of that.” When you learn to be aware that you are dreaming—within a dream—you not only have the power to steer yourself away from the monster and into the arms of Brad Pitt, for instance, but you train your mind to avoid nightmares in the first place. “Lucid dreaming enhances your ability to learn from the dream state,” says Dr. Bulkeley.

9. You don’t have to be asleep to dream.
Turns out, you can dream at your desk at work, in the car, even at your kid’s soccer game. Wakeful dreaming—not to be confused with daydreaming—is real and somewhat easy to do, says Dr. Bulkeley; it just involves tapping into your active imagination. The first step is to think about a recent dream you had (preferably a good one!). “Find a quiet contemplative place and bring a dream that you remember back into your waking awareness and let it unfold,” he says. “Let the dream re-energize.” Wakeful dreaming can be used as a relaxation tool, but Dr. Bulkeley says it can also help your mind process a puzzling dream. “It creates a more fluid interaction between unconscious parts of the mind and wakeful parts of the mind,” he says.

http://www.womansday.com/health-fitness/9-things-you-didnt-know-about-dreams-110657

http://www.womansday.com/

More on dream therapy, with links to other articles about dreams

7 Common Dreams and What They Mean

While some people, including medical researchers, believe dreams are a benign, meaningless byproduct of sleep, many medical experts, psychologists, and psychiatrists, not to mention poets, musicians, and visual artists, believe dreams hold the key to our emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being. Sometimes, our dreams are complex, weird, and impossible to describe once we’re awake. But then there are common dreams that many people experience, including dreams of being chased, of falling, or of being naked in public. But what exactly is the meaning behind these familiar dreams? Here are seven common dreams with interpretations we sourced from dream analysts, psychotherapists, and self-proclaimed psychics.

1. Teeth Falling Out

Nothing you dream about is meant to be taken literally. So the dream that your teeth are falling out, a dream common among children as well as adults, is a symbolic representation that might mean a few different things. Some believe that this dream indicates you said something that you should have kept to yourself. Others believe this dream expresses a fear of growing old, or becoming a more mature adult and taking on a new level of responsibility.

2. Being Chased

Who doesn’t love a good chase scene? When we dream we’re being chased, the feeling can be exhilarating or terrifying, depending on who we think is chasing us. Often in such a dream, we have no idea, we just know we’d better bolt or else we’re going to get caught and then who knows what will happen? The basic interpretation of this dream says that in your waking life, you are avoiding something that you need to confront, like a situation at work, for instance, or a heart-to-heart with a friend or family member. Or the dream might mean that you are afraid that something from your past is going to catch up with you. Or maybe you should just quit watching Jason Bourne movies before bed.

3. You're Back in School

The saying goes something like, “Life is just like high school with money.” If you find yourself dreaming that you’re back in high school, only this time, your schoolmates are a combination of co-workers, Jason Bourne, and your mother, take heart; your unconscious mind may be telling you that if you pay attention in real life, you will succeed. At the same time, the dream might indicate that lately, you’ve been feeling uncertain and unprepared, either for the demands of your job or personal life. Now if in the same dream, your teeth fall out, it’s time to call a psychoanalyst.

4. Flying

Dreams where you fly like a bird or Superman generally indicate you’re feeling confident and happy in your waking life. Some cultures offer fussier interpretations, depending on whether you’re flying as yourself or have turned into a bird or some kind of mythological winged creature. We should note, however, that people who consume codeine products may dream that they are flying or have left their body and are observing themselves from above, which is a little more unnerving than dreaming that by flapping your arms you can avoid the Monday morning traffic jam.

5. Naked

Sigmund Freud wrote in his book On Dreams, “The dream is not senseless, not absurd … it is a psychic phenomenon of full value, and indeed the fulfillment of a wish.” So how would Freud explain the very common dream where the dreamer is in public, at work or at some formal occasion, and is partially or entirely naked? This is one of those dreams where, when you wake up, you are forever grateful it was just a dream! Psychoanalysts believe this is a dream about feeling inadequate and unprepared for an upcoming event, or life in general. However, some cultures believe this dream means you’re going to come into money, through a lottery or some other kind of gambling. Dream you’re naked? When you wake up, check your stock portfolio or go buy a Powerball ticket!

6. Falling

The sensation of falling from a great height isn’t pleasant, unless you have a parachute. Dreams where you are falling from the sky or from out of a window can simply mean you feel you’re failing (or “falling”) in your personal or professional life. Feelings of isolation or that you lack emotional support can also inspire this common dream.

7. Lost

The psychiatrist Carl Jung wrote, “I know that if we meditate on a dream sufficiently long and thoroughly … something almost always comes of it.” Dreams where you are lost, perhaps within the halls of a school filled with lockers or outside on the streets of a strange city are pretty straightforward in their symbolism and indicate you’ve been feeling confused and insecure. Like all of the dreams we’ve described, the dream of being lost can mean many more things, depending upon what’s going on in your conscious life. If you’re experiencing stress at work or are getting ready to make some life changes, try meditating upon your dreams to see if they are trying to tell you something helpful.

Courtesy of our friends at Online Psychology Degreehttp://www.onlinepsychologydegree.net/2012/08/08/7-common-dreams-and-what-they-actually-mean/

What do you think of these dream 'translations'? Do they match your own experiences/ideas?