In contrast, 80 per cent of those surveyed under the age of 30 confirmed they had dreams rich in colour, the Daily Mail reported.
The report titled ‘Life Span Differences in Colour Dreaming’ explained: “When we inquired among college students whether they dreamt in colour, most answered that their dreams were as fully in colour as is real life.
“Inquiries among older persons, however, produced the same result as the early research — dreams were predominantly in black and white.”
The findings, published by the American Psychological Association, could be partly linked to younger generations and their experience of watching colour television since childhood, the researchers said.
“Colour television may play an important role in that, people in Japan younger than 20 in 1993 and 36 at 2009 have watched colour television since birth,” they said. However, they argued the explosion in popularity of colour television could not solely explain the phenomenon.
“If the incidence of colour in dream world were affected only by media exposure, it would abruptly, instead of gradually, decrease because the most representative coloured media — colour television — became prevalent very quickly in Japan,” they added.
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