Predicting something about a dreamer

Elements

The Elements search is is run automatically after you enter a dream set via the “Select set” button. 

For this demonstration I choose the “Lawrence” set available at Kelly Bulkeley’s Sleep and Dream Database (http://sleepanddreamdatabase.org:5000/dream/).

The result is a periodic table display of the 100 element categories. The search compares the matches for each category against the average results for 50 sets of dreams - referred to as the baseline results. Categories that aren't very different from the baseline are greyed out. Categories that are significantly more frequent are outlined in red. Significantly less frequent categories are outlined in blue.

If the icons representing each element aren't obvious you can hold your mouse over them to get a preview of the matches. Clicking on an icon runs a search for the category.

From the higher than baseline results we can guess that Lawrence is involved in the arts, is British (the grey icon of the man with a top hat) and that he drinks a bit (the blue cocktail glass icon) and that he works in an office setting (cubical icon).

British-isms matched in the Lawrence set

• centre
• maths
• my flat
• orientated
• their flat
• to hospital
• theatre

Also, the top match in the Places search (map icon at the bottom of column 5) is “London”.

The star icon (upper left) represents famous names who Lawrence dreams of or mentions.

• Neil Young
• Nick Cave
• Francis Bacon
• Jimi Hendrix
• Elton John
• Debbie Harry
• Charles Darwin
• Stephen Fry
• Elvis Presley
• George W Bush

Under-reported in Lawrence’s set are Vision (eye) and Color (color wheel), female character identifiers (pink silhouette). Also seen are low Exercise, Thinking, Talking, Dogs, Reading, Body references and a very low reference to Self. 

Gender 

(Refer to the first column of the Elements result.)

How do we know that Lawrence is male (other than his male name)? The Elements search uses two methods for guessing the dreamer’s gender.Look for mentions of male versus female self references. These include body parts, clothing, etc. A little less obvious are matches for declarations of gender such as “I was a man”. These wouldn't be worth mentioning unless they contradict waking reality. So if a dreamer says “I was a man” we can assume the dreamer is a woman. 

The first 2 icons (pink lips and mustache) show results for these categories. In Lawrence’s set there are no matches for either, so we can’t rely on this method to determine Lawrence’s gender.

The second method for guessing gender relies on results from the baseline sets. I did searches for the most commonly occurring words in male versus female sets. Any word matches which were significantly different between the male and female sets noted. The difference between the male and female average percent matches is used to set a threshold for that word’s “vote” for male versus female. The size of difference is used as a weight to multiply each vote. The sum of the weighted vote is the second gender guess. (A similar procedure was used with paired young versus old dreamers to guess the age of an unknown dreamer.)

The second gender test guesses that Lawrence is male, and also that he’s in his twenties.

Sexual orientation

I do a simple search for matches for sex which includes the words immediately surrounding the matches. I then search these matches for male versus female character matches. The results guesses that Lawrence’s sexual preference is for females.

Family

A fairly straightforward search for “my (mother|father|sister|brother|duaghter|son|...)” gives most of the information for the family search. There are a few exceptions. “My mother” is rather formal usage. A dreamer is more likely to say “mom” or ‘dad”. If you want to capture the names of family members or other information and expression that optionally matches capitalized words (names) near the Family matches is used. The search must also check for fictive family members that only occur in dreams. 

Lawrence's result shows a daughter but no wife. He could be widowed or simply not married.

A search for “(my (lover|partner|significant other|girlfriend|fiance|ex.?wife|late wife))” returns 52 matches for “my partner” and nothing else, so Lawrence is unmarried but in a relationship.

Lawrence has a brother (or brothers) but no sisters. Also note the Lawrence’s father is mentioned almost two times as often as his mother, which may indicate his mother is deceased.

Note that Lawrence never mention the names of his partner, daughter or brother. This is likely to protect their privacy.

Lawrence prefers the company of males

The low result for female character identifiers is interesting. Looking it the Names results shows that the top 10 names are all males. Lawrence lives in a ‘man’s world’. 

• Ralph
• Terry
• Sal
• Toby
• Reece
• Ron
• Tyler
• Tim
• Karl
• Juan
• Claire
• Kate
• Len
• Catherine
• Saul
• Trisha
• Kevin
• Adrian

Conclusion

We can gather some basic information about a dreamer from their dreams. In the case of anonymous dream sets we can't check that all of our guesses are correct.