Dreams can be confusing, frightening or dreamily beautiful – but what psychological function do they have? A study now suggests that the answer to this question depends, among other things, on the culture. The indigenous population of Africa therefore dreams differently than people from industrialized nations. While the dreams of people from African hunter-gatherer cultures often focus on life-threatening situations that are overcome through social support, the dreams of people from the global north are more about confronting their own fears.
Night after night we live a hallucinatory experience: we dream. Sometimes we can remember numerous details vividly, sometimes we don’t even know that we even dreamed. But why do we actually dream? Are our nighttime hallucinations simply a meaningless byproduct of processing in the brain? Or do they fulfill an evolutionary important function, for example by preparing us for certain events in our lives?
How indigenous people dream
“Science has been concerned with the question of the function of dreams for a long time,” explains a team led by David Samson from the University of Toronto in Canada. “However, most of the studies on this have only been carried out in the global north, which limits the significance.” In order to make cross-cultural comparisons, Samson and his team have now also examined the dreams of members of two indigenous ethnic groups: the BaYaka from the Republic of Congo and the Hadza from Tanzania. Both are traditional hunter-gatherer communities.
The researchers recorded a total of 896 dreams from 234 people from these two ethnic groups using dream diaries. A field research team asked the participants every morning whether they could remember dreams and, if so, what situations, people and animals appeared in them. They were also asked to describe their emotions during the dream and classify whether they experienced the dream overall as a positive or negative experience. As a comparison, Samson and his team used data from previous studies that examined the dreams of people from Canada, Belgium and Switzerland, including those with mental illness and nightmare disorders.
Community help
The result: “We found that the dreams of the BaYaka and Hadza are very dynamic,” reports co-author Lampros Perogamvros from the University of Geneva. “They often begin with a life-threatening dangerous situation, but end with overcoming that threat – often in the form of social support.” For example, an indigenous person dreamed of being attacked by a buffalo in the bush, but then being rescued by a member of the community . Although these dreams are frightening at the beginning, they are usually not experienced as negative due to the positive emotional resolution.
“The BaYaka and Hadza have very strong social ties in their communities,” explains Samson. “Compared to the more individualistic societies in Europe and North America, daily life and the division of labor tend to be more egalitarian. This type of social bond and trust in the community seems to ensure that the threats in dreams are best processed emotionally through social relationships.” Due to the strong social component, the dreams of the BaYaka and Hadza therefore fulfill a particularly pronounced function of emotional regulation .
Cultural differences
People from Europe and North America, on the other hand, often reported dreams that were associated with personal fears – for example, that a close relative would die, that your partner would leave you, or that you would get stuck in an elevator and fall. According to the research team, these types of dreams can help you face your own fears and better manage them. “On the other hand, especially for people who suffer from nightmares or social anxiety, there is often a lack of emotional resolution, so the dreams do not end in a cathartic way,” says Perogamvros. “In these cases, the adaptive function of dreaming appears to be inadequate.”
However, according to the study, in mentally healthy people, dreams can be effective in helping to regulate emotions by associating potential threats with a fear-free context and thus helping to reduce negative emotions. The approaches to solutions in community-oriented indigenous communities seem to be different than in individualistic industrialized nations. “The present study shows that there is a strong connection between our sociocultural life and the function of dreams,” say the researchers.
Source: David Samson (University of Toronto, Canada) et al., Scientific Reports, doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-43319-z