Conservatives have more bad dreams!

[indra]

I thought this was interesting....

Bad dreams haunt right-wingers


12:34 11 July 01


The further your politics lean to the right the more likely you are to have nightmares, according to a dream researcher from Santa Clara University in California.

Kelly Bulkeley found that US Republicans are almost three times more likely to have bad dreams than Democrats.

"That's a lot. No wonder they're twitching all the time," says Rick Hess, spokesman for the Democratic party in Washington DC. "Even during the election Bush was saying some pretty scary things. If I were a Republican right now, I'd be having nightmares too."

But Kevin Sheridan, deputy press secretary for the Republican National Committee in Washington DC responds: "If we are it's because we're left cleaning up the mess left by eight years of Bill Clinton. We sleep better now Bush is in the White House."


Bleak and hopeless


Bulkeley was himself born into a Republican family but usually votes Democrat and admires the Greens. He looked at more than four years of dreams reported by 56 college students around the US. Half of the participants were women, half men, half very conservative and half very liberal.

Along with two colleagues who didn't know the political affiliation of the dreamers, Bulkeley analysed all the dreams. He presented his results at the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Dreams at Santa Cruz on Wednesday.

Bulkeley found that half of the Republicans' dreams were nightmares, compared to only 18 per cent of the Democrats' dreams. "What's striking is that the nightmares of people on the right are more nightmarish. They were bleaker. There was more hopelessness," he says.

Several people, for example, dreamt that their families were killed. But in the liberal version the murdered father came back to life and the dreamer had a chance to confront the killer.

Republicans also tended to have more life-like dreams Bulkeley says. And the right-leaning women seemed to be more anxious about things like accidental pregnancies, including one who dreamt that her baby turned into a kitten.


Realism and naivety


Bulkeley says these results may confirm other studies which show that right-leaning people are more aggressive and suffer from more misfortune.

He speculates the results could be linked to several personality traits, such as realism and repressed anxiety on the part of conservatives, or creativity and utopian naÏvety on the part of liberals.

But with so few subjects Bulkeley admits the results could also be due to chance: "This is a study that needs to be filed under suggestive rather than definitive."

Bulkeley says the study was forced to be so small because he could only find 14 right-leaning males, while he was flooded with left-leaning females. Since he used a standard method of recruiting volunteers, he suspects that all dream studies could be skewed by over representation of a certain kind of dreamer.


Nicola Jones

This is the site I got this article from. NewScientist.com

 

[Earnie Shavers]

It's called 'guilt'.

 

[DaveC]

Instant Karma's gonna get you.

 

[sharky]

now now, it may be some instant karma or may just be all the drugs us liberals inbibe. It's not just me, right? right? Is anyone going to pass me the bong already or what?

[and yet the hardest drug I use is beer. Ok, fine. Jack and Cokes. You got me.]

 

[BVS]

I'm already plauged with bad dreams and insomnia as it is. One more reason not to switch sides.

 

[Bono's shades]

I have bad dreams and insomnia, and I'm left-leaning. I wonder if my being raised by right-wing parents has something to do with it - or am I just a closeted Republican after all?

 

[verte76]

Geez, no wonder I never remember my dreams. I had no idea it was my politics.

 

[ShellBeThere]

i don't tend to recall my dreams either, but my daughter greeted me this morning with a scarily precocious (wtf with thatword? I don't like it, but I don't know why...) look and introduction of a terrifying dream.
Mommy I had a bad dream (pulling off a dry pull-up).
I was in Noah (brother's) room, and a lobster snapped at my fingers (or was it hand?) and then I got eaten by a shark but I got out of his mouth alive.
I wrote it down, on a postit in the kitchen (why don't they sell post-it pads with numbered pages?! hmm?!), and then she asked to look at it. I read it with her, since my handwriting is just a little hard for her to read.
trippy!

 

[nbcrusader]

You might as well add the claims that liberals are better educated, more rounded, bigger hearted, dress better and have nicer hair to the list of your "claims".

 

[DrTeeth]

You might as well add the claims that liberals are better educated, more rounded, bigger hearted, dress better and have nicer hair to the list of your "claims".

Wish granted

 

[nbcrusader]

Is there a nice way to add arrogant to the list too?

 

[ShellBeThere]

Sushi!? Sushi?! You think this is about Sushi?!

 

[kobayashi]

Is there a nice way to add arrogant to the list too?

the term 'better' is preferred.

 

[pax]

Why not just sum it up with "cooler"?

 

[indra]

Why not just sum it up with "cooler"?

Well, we already knew that!

 

[deep]

You might as well add the claims that liberals are better educated, more rounded, bigger hearted, dress better and have nicer hair to the list of your "claims".

hmm, still thinking about the hair.

howard stern's hair

 

[DrTeeth]

Speculate all you want, but I'm sure I have better hair than Cheney, even though I'm not Liberal.

 

[deep]

based on your avatar

i concur

 

[LoveTown]

Is there a nice way to add arrogant to the list too?

I don't think George wants to be included in the liberal list...but ok, if you think he does.

 

[mistyrose]

oh brother