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Running head: LUCID DREAMING PREVALENCE AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
Lucid Dreaming
A Research of Prevalence among University Students in Taiwan
I-Hsin, Chen
National Chengchi University
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Running head: LUCID DREAMING PREVALENCE AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
Lucid Dreaming
A Research of Prevalence among University Students in Taiwan
Dreaming is a common experience of all human beings. However, the mystery of
the cause of dreaming is yet concluded. After Freud, this enigmatically undiscovered
field of science and psychology has always been a topic that people are interested in.
During the summer of 2010, a movie called “Inception” aroused a new craze to
“dreaming”. The movie won four Oscars and grossed $823 million dollars worldwide
(IMDb, n.d.). Its multi-layer plot explored the possibility of controlling dreams and
created a novel world in dreams where everything is possible. The original idea of
“Inception” is defacto from “lucid dreaming”. The term “lucid dreaming” refers to a
dream that one is aware of while dreaming. From research done in the past, the
prevalence, which means the number of the occurrences, shows that lucid dreaming is
“a common phenomenon” (Schredl & Erlacher, 2004, p.1470). However, the samples
of those researches were usually students who enrolled in psychology courses
(Schredl & Erlacher, 2004) or adults who has “unusually high interest in dreaming
and/or lucid dreaming” (Gackenbach, 1984, para.1). It is possible that it was more
convenient for those psychologists making their own students or people who are
interest in this rare topic to take part in their projects. What will the result be if more
non-psychologically-related participants are added into the calculation? Is lucid
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Running head: LUCID DREAMING PREVALENCE AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
dreaming prevalence still high among non-psychology students? In order to answer
this question, I divided my research into three parts:
1. The history of lucid dreaming
2. The process of lucid dreaming
3. A survey to non-psychology university students
The History of Lucid Dreaming
The discovery of lucid dreaming is not as resent as we think. Far from 415 AD,
St. Augustine of Hippo, who was a bishop, a philosopher, and a theologian, described
a lucid dreaming experience in his letter. A friend of him, Gennadius, who was a
physician, had dreams in which a saintly youth appeared and talked with him in a
philosophical manner (Knight, 2009). Also, a 17th century English writer Sir Thomas
Browne mentioned his own lucid dreaming experience in his book “Religio Medici”
(The Religion of a Doctor): "...yet in one dream I can compose a whole Comedy,
behold the action, apprehend the jests and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof"
(Browne, n.d., para.12). Besides Western records, in China, there is also a famous
story called “The Butterfly Dream”, which is related to the concept of lucid dreaming.
A philosopher in 4 BC named Zhuangzi had a dream about himself as a butterfly
flying in the sky. He wrote in his book, that “he didn't know if he was Zhuangzi who
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Running head: LUCID DREAMING PREVALENCE AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi. (Burton,
1964)” Although this is a more philosophical argument, it has become a common
Chinese idiom. From these examples, it is clear that lucid dreaming is not a new
finding, but an international dreaming experience that has been noticed for thousands
of years.
The process of lucid dreaming
In order to find out how lucid dreaming work, one should first understand how
ordinary dreams are produced. There are mainly two kinds of sleep stages: rapid eye
movement (REM) and non-rapid eye movement (NREM). Also, the non-rapid eye
movement is consist of three stages—N1, N2, and N3. The illustration below shows
an example of a sleep starting from midnight to 6:30 in the morning.
Illustration 1-1
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Running head: LUCID DREAMING PREVALENCE AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
Note. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sleep_Hypnogram.svg
In the illustration, apparently, the REM stage occurs more frequent and lasts longer in
the later sleep cycle. All dreams take place during the REM sleep. The REM sleep
begins with a part of our brain called “the pons” sends signals to the outer layer of our
brain which relates to the ability of thinking, learning, and organizing information. At
the same time, the pons sends signals to stop the neurons of the spinal cord from
working; therefore we are parallelized in our sleep. Our limbs and body do not move
when we are sleeping. This mechanism can prevent us from acting out what we do in
our dreams, which may cause us to hurt ourselves (National Institute of Neurological
Disorders and Stroke, 2007).
There are two types of lucid dreaming. They are divided according to how
they initiate a lucid dream—a dream-initiated lucid dream (DILD), and a
wake-initiated lucid dream (WILD). A DILD usually starts from a normal dream, but
the dreamer eventually concludes that it is a dream while he or she is still dreaming.
As to a WILD, it is a more intentionally way to have a lucid dreaming experience. A
WILD is defined as a dream which “…occurs when the sleeper enters REM sleep
with unbroken self-awareness directly from the waking state.” (LaBerge & Levitan,
1995, para.2). Generally speaking, if a sleeper is able to stay conscious from awake to
the sleep stage, then he or she can be successful in having a lucid dream. This method
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Running head: LUCID DREAMING PREVALENCE AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
sounds impossible, but there are actually several methods that can help people to
attain a wake-initiated lucid dream. Such as concentrating on relaxing the body,
counting breaths, envisioning climbing stairs and so on. With proper training, a
sleeper can increase the frequency of having lucid dreams.
A survey to non-psychology university students
In a research done by Michael Schredl and Daniel Erlacher, it is concluded that
“lucid dreaming is a common phenomenon” (Schredl & Erlacher, 2004, p.1470). And
from all 444 samples, which were collected at the University of Mannheim,
Heidelberg, and Landau, 82% of them reported lucid dreaming experience. The
samples were consisted by 69 men and 376 women. In addition, they were mostly
psychology students. Is lucid dreaming really a condition so common to people? Is
lucid dreaming prevalence still high among non-psychology students, who are likely
more involved in related fields? In order to solve these questions, I designed an online
questionnaire for non-psychology major university students. The main reason for
conducting the survey by online questionnaires is that for students nowadays, internet
is the most convenient medium. Through the internet, the survey can be done by more
participants with high efficiency.
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Running head: LUCID DREAMING PREVALENCE AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
The questions were divided into six categories: basic information, excluding
unqualified samples, dreaming frequency, dream recall ability, lucid dreaming
frequency, and lucid dream content. There were 51 qualified samples collected. Their
age varies from 19 to 25. The average age is 20 years old. In total, 51 students from 8
universities and 27 different non-psychology departments participated the survey. The
percentages of male and female participants are as below:
Samples
Male
39%
Female
61%
Illustration 2-1
All 51 samples were qualified for further questions, since they all have dreaming
experience. After giving a short definition of lucid dreaming, participants were asked
to answer the following question: “Do you have lucid dreaming experience?” The
result is as below:
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Running head: LUCID DREAMING PREVALENCE AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
Do you have lucid dreaming
experience?
No
39%
Yes
61%
Illustration 2-2
Participants were also asked to write a short summary of their lucid dreams in order to
verify their eligibility. For those who had lucid dreaming experience, they were asked
to answer the question: “How many lucid dreaming experiences do you have?” The
result is as below:
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Running head: LUCID DREAMING PREVALENCE AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
How many lucid dreaming
experience do you have?
50%
0%
1~5
6~10
11~20
21 and
up
Illustration 2-3
In addition, 64% of the lucid dreamers answered that their lucid dreams mostly
occurred during childhood and adolescent (18 and below), while 64% of the lucid
dreamers still have lucid dreams now.
Overall, the statistics show that the prevalence of lucid dreaming is over 60%
(Illustration 2-2). Among those lucid dreamers, most of them had less than 10 lucid
dreams (Illustration 2-3). Moreover, their lucid dreams occur more often during
childhood and adolescent than adulthood. But, the number of lucid dreamers who still
have lucid dreaming experience is over 60%. From the statistics, it also shows that
there are neither gender differences, nor any relation between dream recall ability and
dreaming frequency. To sum up, having lucid dreams is not rare, but not as common
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Running head: LUCID DREAMING PREVALENCE AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
as the previous research showed.
Conclusion
Through the aspect of history, lucid dreaming probably appeared at the day
when human have the ability to dream. To scientists, it is still a field waiting to be
explored. For us, it is actually closer to our life than we think. Although lucid
dreaming is not a common experience, it is not rare, either. In introspection, the
survey designed for testing lucid dreaming prevalence was confined by several
elements. Firstly, the lack of professional training in related fields caused the survey
could only show a general result, but not a more thorough analysis. Secondly, the
survey was consisted only by yes-no questions and some short answers. Unlike
previous research done by scientists, this survey has no face-to-face interview, whose
function is to verify eligibility. This confinement increased the risk of false
understanding of the participants to the definition of lucid dreaming. On the other
hand, there is an interesting finding which has the potential to be the future subject.
According to the short summary of lucid dreams written by every lucid dreamer, most
of the content is about being killed, being chased after by someone, death, and flying
in the sky. The similarity is too obvious that it cannot be neglected. As for the reason
to this similarity in dream content, it has to wait for experts to solve the puzzle.
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Running head: LUCID DREAMING PREVALENCE AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
References
Browne, Thomas. (n.d.). Religio Medici. Retrieved from
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Gackenbach, Jayne. (1984). An Estimate of Lucid Dreaming Incidence. Lucidity
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Inception. (n.d.). In The Internet Movie Database. Retrieved from
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/
Knight, Kevin (editor). (2009). Letter 159. Retrieved from
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1102159.htm
LaBerge, Stephen. & Levitan, Lynne. (1995). Validity Established of Dreamlight
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Watson, Burton (translator). (1964). Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings. New York:
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Schredl, Michael. & Erlacher, Daniel. (2004). Lucid dreaming frequency and
personality. Personality and Individual Differences, 37. Retrieved from
http://files.meetup.com/1675783/Lucid%20dreaming%20frequency%20and
%20personality.pdf