We Dream in Black and White

Most people dream in colour, and the black-and-white belief turns out to be a fingerprint of the media we grew up with. Studies from the early 20th century onward show the proportion of people who say they dream in monochrome rose during the era of black-and-white film and television, then fell again as colour media took over. Researchers comparing older people who grew up with black-and-white TV to younger people raised on colour found the older group far more likely to report greyscale dreams, strongly suggesting the screens of our childhood shaped how we think our dreams look. When people are woken during dreaming and asked immediately, colour is usually present. So whether you 'dream in black and white' may say more about the television in your living room as a child than about your brain. The mind appears to dream in colour by default; the monochrome was a cultural overlay, fading out with the old TVs.