Here’s some quotes from an article describing recent dream research:
Liberals are more restless sleepers and have a higher number of bizarre, surreal dreams — including fantasy settings and a wide variety of sexual encounters.
Woo-hoo!
Conservatives’ dreams were, on average, far more mundane and focused on realistic people, situations and settings.
They dream about people having a panel discussion about the Federal Reserve policy.
Liberals were far more likely to have sexual dreams about strangers and a variety of partners, while liberal women showed a greater tendency towards same-sex fantasies than their conservative counterparts (24 versus four per cent).
Woo-hoo!
Conservatives, by comparison, were far more likely to report having sexual dreams about their spouse or current partner.
"I had a dream about my husband clipping his toenails."
While left-wingers might be more adventurous in the subconscious bedroom, they’re also more likely to wake up in a cold sweat.
Well, the reason we wake up that way is because of our passionate dreams.
Overall, conservative males appear to sleep the most soundly and remember the fewest dreams, while liberal women are the most restless sleepers and fantastical dreamers.
Cool. And then the "researcher" concludes:
"While some of my colleagues think my research reinforces the stereotype of repressed, uptight conservatives, it also shows that many liberals may he hanging on the edge of mental well-being… There may be a lot of hidden distress and unpleasantness in the liberal mind."
Why? Because I dream about sex?
That got me to wonder about the dream researcher behind the study. So I did a little research on this "dream researcher" and I should point out that he’s hardly what you would call a "scientist". His PhD is from University of Chicago Divinity School, and his conservative religious bent appears in much of his articles. For example, in one article entitled "Dreams and the 2004 Presidential Election", he writes:
A Bush-supporting 28-year old woman from North Carolina had this dream twice within a week in mid-October: “I had a dream that Bush lost. It was actually set up like, a newspaper article I was reading. I was reading that Bush only served one 4 year term. (which would lead me to believe he didn’t win) Then I was trying to see who was the new president, but I couldn’t find the name, I assumed it was Kerry but something told me maybe it isn’t.”
Perhaps the Biblical tradition that doubling a dream signals its prophetic truth (Gen. 41:32) enhances the credibility of this woman’s dreams, at least from a conservative Christian perspective.
In my view, injecting a "conservative Christian perspective" into a "scientific" analysis damages this guy’s credibility as a scientist. Scientists (and I include legitimate dream researchers in that category) should be impartial observers of the natural world.
Still, I thought the whole dream/political thing was interesting. And his data strikes me as probably accurate, although his analysis of the data leaves much to be desired.