The Dreams of College Men and Women in 1950 and 1980: A Comparison of Dream Contents and Sex Differences

Transcription

1 Sleep, 5(2): Raven Press, New York The Dreams of College Men and Women in 1950 and 1980: A Comparison of Dream Contents and Sex Differences Calvin S. Hall, G. William Domhoff, Kenneth A. Blick, and Kathryn E. Weesner University of California, Santa Cruz, California; and University of Richmond, Richmond, Virginia Summary: Two samples of dreams collected from college students in 1950 and 1980 under similar conditions were analyzed using some of the Hall Van de Castle scales. It was found that there has been little change over a period of 30 years in what college students dream about. Moreover, the sex differences in the 1980 dreams are the same as those in the 1950 dreams. Key Words: Dreams-Content analysis-sex differences. This investigation addresses two questions. Are American male and female college students dreaming about the same or different things today as their counterparts were 30 years ago? Are the sex differences in dream contents today the same as those found 30 years ago? With regard to the first question, there appears to be only one study that compared content variables for dreams collected from groups of subjects at different periods of time. Kramer, McQuarrie, and Bonnet (unpublished) compared dreams collected from rapid eye movement awakenings in the laboratory during with the norms given by Hall and Van de Castle (1) which are based on "home" dreams collected from college students between 1947 and They found a number of differences. However, the contents of "laboratory" and "home" dreams are somewhat different (2-7), so the comparison is not an appropriate one. Hall and Nordby (8) presented evidence from the content analysis of dream diaries kept for many years that there is considerable consistency in what a person dreams about as a young adult and what he or she dreams about as an older adult. Accepted for publication October Address correspondence and reprint requests to Calvin S. Hall, 1310 West Cliff Drive, Santa Cruz, California

2 DREAMS OF COLLEGE STUDENTS: These studies are not comparable with the present one, in which the dreams of one group are compared with those of another group 30 years later. With respect to sex differences in dreams, there have been a number of studies (9), but there has been no study of changes in sex differences over a period of time, apart from the one by Kramer et al. (unpublished). METHODS Hall began collecting dreams from students at Western Reserve University in 1947 and continued to collect them until Hall and Van de Castle (1) used a sample of these dreams, plus some that were collected at Baldwin-Wallace College, to compile norms for the categories they had developed for making an analysis of the contents of dreams. In 1979 and 1980, Blick collected dreams from students at the University of Richmond. This provided an opportunity to compare what students are dreaming about today with what students were dreaming about a generation ago. In addition to the fact that both populations are college students, there are other similarities. Case Western Reserve University (hereafter referred to as Reserve) and the University of Richmond (hereafter referred to as Richmond) are private, urban, coeducational universities whose students come from about the same socioeconomic levels, the middle and upper-middle strata. The dreams were collected in psychology classes in both universities. They were written by the students themselves on standard report forms outside of class. In compiling norms for the Reserve dreams, five dreams from each of 100 males and 100 females were used. The Richmond sample also consisted of five dreams recorded by each of 53 males and 69 females; in a few cases, three, four, or six dreams were turned in. For the Richmond sample the total number of male dreams is 263 and of female dreams, 340. The Hall-Van de Castle system of content analysis comprises a large number of categories. For comparing the 1950 Reserve dreams with the 1980 Richmond dreams, the following categories were selected: characters; aggressive, friendly, and sexual interactions; misfortunes; settings; and two types of objects, clothing and weapons. These categories were chosen for several reasons. First, they have been used in other studies; second, they are categories with large frequencies; and finally, previous studies indicate that for some of them there are sex differences and for some there are no sex differences. Scoring of the Richmond dreams was done by Weesner and checked by Hall. Scoring of the Reserve dreams had been done by Hall and checked by Van de Castle. Scoring followed the rules set forth by Hall and Van de Castle (1). Two character classes were scored: males-females and familiar-unfamiliar. The total number of males was divided by the total number of males and females to obtain comparable proportions for the four groups of subjects. characters are those known to the dreamer and include family members, relatives, friends and acquaintances, and prominent persons. characters are those the dreamer does not know or cannot identify. The number of familiar characters was divided by the number of familiar and unfamiliar characters to obtain comparable proportions for the four groups. Sleep, Vol. 5, No.2, 1982

3 190 C. S. HALL ET AL. Seven propurtions involving aggression were computed for each of the four groups: (i) total aggressions divided by the total number of characters, (ii) aggressive encounters with males divided by the number of male characters, (iii) aggressive encounters with females divided by the number of female characters, (iv) aggressive encounters with familiar characters divided by the number of familiar characters, (v) aggressive encounters with unfamiliar characters divided by the number of unfamiliar characters, (vi) dreamer as aggressor divided by dreamer as aggressor and as victim, and (vii) number of physical aggressions divided by the number of physical and verbal aggressions. Six proportions involving friendliness were computed in the same manner as aggression. The friendliness categories cannot be divided into physical and verbal. Five miscellaneous proportions were computed for each of the four groups: (i) number of dreamers who had or witnessed at least one sexual encounter, (ii) number of misfortunes divided by number of dreams, (iii) number of outdoor settings divided by the number of outdoor and indoor settings, (iv) number of times clothes are mentioned divided by the number of dreams, and (v) number of times weapons are mentioned divided by the number of dreams. The formula for the significance of the difference between uncorrelated proportions was applied. The significance level was set at RESULTS Comparisons between Reserve males and Richmond males and between Reserve females and Richmond females are presented in Table 1. For characters, there are two significant differences. Richmond males and Richmond females have a higher proportion of familiar characters than their Reserve counterparts. For aggression, there are no significant differences. For friendliness, there are three significant differences for the male comparisons and one for the female comparisons. Richmond males have a lower proportion of total friendliness, friendliness with males, and friendliness with unfamiliar characters. Since there are no differences between Richmond and Reserve males for friendliness with females or with familiar characters, the differences must be due to less friendliness by the Richmond males with unfamiliar male characters. Richmond females also have a lower proportion oftotal friendliness, but there are no other differences. For the miscellaneous content categories there are two differences for the male comparisons and one for the female comparisons. Richmond males have lower proportions of dreams with at least one sexual encounter and references to clothing. Richmond females have a lower proportion of references to clothing. Of the 40 comparisons, 9 are significant. Six of these are for male comparisons and 3 for female comparisons. Comparisons between Reserve males and Reserve females and between Richmond males and Richmond females are presented in Table 2. It will be seen that the proportions that are significantly different for Reserve males and females are also significantly different for Richmond males and females. Those proportions that are not significantly different for Reserve males and females are also not significantly different for Richmond males and females. In other words, sex differ- Sleep. Vol. 5. No.2, 1982

4 TABLE 1. Comparisons of Reserve males with Richmond males and Reserve females with Richmond females Content variable Reserve Richmond Reserve Richmond 1. + females 2. Aggression Friendliness unfamiliar Aggressions Aggressions with males Aggressions with females Aggressions with familiar Aggressions with unfamiliar Aggressor Aggressor + victim Physical aggression Physical + verbal aggression Friendliness Friendliness with males Friendliness with females Friendliness with familiar Friendliness with unfamiliar Befriender Befriender + befriended Sex, misfortunes, settings, and objects " b " " " " Dreamers with at least one sex b No. dreamers Misfortunes Outdoor settings Outdoor + indoor Clothes Weapons " p < 0.001, b P < " "

5 TABLE 2. Comparisons of Reserve males with Reserve females and Richmond males with Richmond females Reserve Richmond Content variable Aggression femal'!s + unfamiliar Aggression Aggression with males Aggression with females Aggression with familiar Friendliness Aggression with unfamiliar Aggressor Aggressor + victim Physical aggression Physical + verbal aggression Friendlines s Friendliness with males Friendliness with females Friendliness with familiar Friendliness with unfamiliar Befriender Befriender + befriended Sex. misfortunes, settings, and objects Dreamers with at least one sex 16. No. dreamers Misfortunes Outdoor settings Outdoor + indoor Clothes Weapons " " " " " " a b " a " " " " " " " b " " " a a " a p < 0.001, b P < 0.01.

6 DREAMS OF COLLEGE STUDENTS: ences or the lack of them in all of the content categories used in this study have remained the same in dreams collected from college students in 1950 and DISCUSSION One can only speculate about why there have been so few changes in what college students are dreaming about today compared with what college students were dreaming about 30 years ago, and why the differences and similarities between males and females have not changed at all. Before offering some speculations, we would like to point out the obvious limitations on generalizing from a finite sample of subjects, 322 college students at two private urban universities, and a restricted number of dreams, about 1600, and their questionable representativeness of the universe of dreams. It is commonly believed that times have changed since 1950, that the parents of the Richmond students lived in a different world than their children. The life styles, attitudes, and values of young people today are said to differ from those a generation ago. An active feminist movement has emerged in the last 30 years, as have other social movements. There has been, it is said, a sexual revolution, a liberalizing of attitudes about sexual behavior. Yet these changes in society appear to have had little effect on dreams. Why is this? One possible answer is that despite social changes, human nature has not changed. This answer assumes that dreams reflect human nature and are relatively impervious to social changes. Another is that 30 years is too short a time for the effects of social changes to manifest themselves in dreams. It may be that the dreams ofthe children ofthe Richmond college students, when they are in college, will differ from those oftheir parents. A third is that there have been no significant changes in society. Everything changes, everything remains the same. Although we cannot say which, if any, of these answers is the correct one, we can discuss them in the light of the continuity hypothesis. The continuity hypothesis states that dreaming is continuous with waking life. That is, people will manifest in their dreams the concerns and preoccupations oftheir waking life. Support for the continuity hypothesis has been found in studies by Snyder (10), Hall and Nordby (8), and others (9). Foulkes (11) has shown that the cognitive development of children as assessed by tests is mirrored in their dreams. For a detailed discussion of the continuity hypothesis and the opposing hypothesis that dreaming is discontinuous with waking life, the complementary or compensatory hypothesis, see Schwartz et al. (12). If the continuity hypothesis is correct, then it would seem that the concerns and preoccupations of college students with respect to the content variables used in this study are much the same in 1980 as they were in 1950, despite whatever changes may have taken place in society. Moreover, the differences and similarities in the concerns and preoccupations of male and female college students have not changed for the content variables used in the present study. REFERENCES 1. Hall CS, Van de Castle RL. The content analysis of dreams. New York: Appleton-Century Crofts, Sleep, Vol. 5, No.2, 1982

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