Nightmares can be good for us, adding to the stuff the dreams are made of
Q. Should we encourage our children to attend the most elite college that will accept them, or might they be better off as “big fish in little ponds”?
A. There are surely advantages to a degree from Harvard as opposed to one from, say, Ohio Wesleyan. But there are also substantial risks attending a school outside your intellectual comfort zone, points out Malcolm Gladwell in “David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants.” And these risks are often overlooked, to the detriment of students and society.
A science student with entrance exam (SAT) scores in the upper third of his or her freshman class has about a 55% chance of actually graduating in the discipline, dropping to about 15% if in the lowest third. But what is remarkable is that this is true independent of the ranking of the school! The mean SAT score for the lowest third at Harvard is about the same as for the upper third at Ohio Wesleyan, suggesting that these groups have the same smarts. Yet a student in the second group is far more likely to actually get a science degree—and a satisfying and lucrative career—attending the lower–ranked school.
Concludes Gladwell, “What matters, in determining the likelihood of getting a science degree, is not how smart you are. It’s how smart you FEEL relative to the other people in your classroom.”
Q. Whatever happened to the “ballistic broiler” of the 1950s, developed under top-secret conditions to broil enormous turnips?
A. Whoa! Broiling turnips? Yes, in a top-secret underground bunker somewhere in Virginia, aerospace researchers developed the Mega Veggie Roast–O–Matic 9000 to flash–broil the oversized root vegetables, says Evan Ackerman of “IEEE Spectrum” magazine. After their successful (and surprisingly tasty) test program, they turned to their true mission with missile nose cones, “using the apparatus to simulate the intense temperature of atmospheric reentry from space. This research proved much more practical, albeit less nutritious.”
Q. Why are our “bad” dreams considered to be “good” for us at times?
A. Once classified as a mental disorder, nightmares are now generally regarded as “any intense negative dream that awakens the dreamer and is vividly recalled on awakening,” most often characterized by fear or anger, says sleep and dream researcher Michelle Carr in “New Scientist” magazine. Now research is showing a possible upside to nightmares.
In one of Carr’s studies, 14 volunteers (with at least two nightmares a week) “got paid to nap,” and though none had a nightmare, all recalled a dream. Actually, “it turns out that people who have a lot of nightmares also have an unusually high number of good dreams,” including social dreams that “enhance feelings of closeness in the real world” and enable them to feel what others are feeling—essential in developing relationships.
Furthermore, sleep researcher Ernest Hartmann found that those seeking therapy for nightmares had “a general sensitivity to all emotional experience” that spills over into perceptions and thoughts and seems to give them a creative edge. “For instance, studies show that such people tend to have greater creative aptitude and artistic expression.”
Carr sums it up this way: “People who are unfortunate in having a lot of nightmares also have a dreaming life that is at least as creative, positive and vivid as it can be distressing and terrifying. What’s more, this imaginative richness is unlikely to be confined to sleep, but also permeates waking thought and daydreams.”
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Bill is a journalist, Rich holds a doctorate in physics. Together the brothers bring you “Strange But True.” Send your questions to strangetrue@compuserve.com.