Could Dreams Be A Mechanism To Help Us Prepare For Danger?

Dreams have been interpreted in a number of different ways through the ages: as messages from the gods, repressed sexual fantasies...... or, based on an evolutionist approach that emerged around the turn of the millennium, as a mechanism that helps us to prepare survival strategies in the face of danger.

Antonio Zadra, a professor in the Department of Psychology, likes that last theory. "Among its merits is that it lets us formulate hypotheses that can be tested quite easily," says Zadra, whose initial study tested no fewer than eight hypotheses derived from the new approach.

The theory was developed by Antti Revonsuo, Director of the Consciousness Research Group at the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Turku in Finland. He postulates that dreams developed in our long-ago ancestors to simulate outside threats, enabling the dreamer to put into practice or rehearse avoidance behaviours.

Pleistocene man faced constant threats from predators, rival tribes, and forces of nature. Seeking ways to avoid danger, our ancestors lived in a perpetual state of alert, and so the dream function assumed the form we see today. The theory is also based on the fact that rehearsing an action in your mind can improve the motor skills needed.

Research on dreams lends some credence to the theory. Research in the 1960s showed that 80% of dreams are negative in content, and misfortune occurs seven times more often than good fortune in dreams. In 96% of cases where there is some interaction with an animal, there is aggression. For both men and women, enemies are nearly always strangers - male strangers.


Posted by: JoAnn    Source