<p>There are some studies that seem to support your suggestion e.g.:</p>

<ul>
<li><p><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0022463" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Dream reports and creative tendencies in students of the arts, sciences, and engineering</a> (paywalled, so I'm quoting the abstract):</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>105 students of arts, sciences, and engineering were asked to report a dream and to take a test which measures independence of judgment and relates to creativity. 4 predictions were stated: (a) (confirmed)—the proportion of dream recallers would be greatest among art students and least among engineering students; (b) (partially confirmed)—dream imaginativeness would be greatest among art students and least among engineering students; [...]</p>
</blockquote></li>
<li><p><a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/j.2162-6057.1995.tb01420.x/abstract" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Creativity and Dream Recall</a> (same as above):</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>The literature on creativity and dream recall often found significant positive correlations between measures of creativity and dream recall frequency (DRF). The present study investigated the relation between creative interests and DRF in detail. The findings confirmed the results reported in the literature, according to which persons with visual and verbal creative skills recalled more dreams. It is suggested that the visual memory may serve as a mediator variable in the relation between creativity and DRF.</p>
</blockquote></li>
</ul>

<hr>

<p>Yet dream recall is a complex topic. As you noted in your comment, it might be different for a single person from night to night. It also seems to be inlfuenced by a lot of factors. Schredl et al. name some of them in <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1365-2869.2003.00344.x/full" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Factors of home dream recall: a structural equation model</a>:</p>

<ul>
<li>Personality measures</li>
<li>Creativity/fantasy</li>
<li>Visual memory</li>
<li>Sleep behavior</li>
<li>Stress measures</li>
</ul>

<p>Yet there are still a lot of factors more to be included, like demographic factors, attitude towards dreams, medication and so on (Schredl has written <a href="https://scholar.google.de/scholar?q=schredl%20dream%20recall" rel="nofollow noreferrer">a lot</a> about dream recall, if you want to dig deeper).</p>

<p>So I'd summarize creativity might increase dream recall but it's only a small part of a bigger picture.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-12-17T15:56:22.713Z
2017-12-17T16:01:57.657Z
2017-12-17T16:01:57.657Z
Phonolog
<p>Everybody dreams, and I'm trying to understand if there is a cause and effect relationship between ability to dream and recall dreams and creativity as an adult. </p>

<p>I would <strong>define the kind of creativity</strong> I'm talking about as creating art, designing products, inventing and making original stuff. These people are at the upper end of a bell curve of creativity or are outside the curve completely (extraordinary creative genius). This is in contrast to ordinary people who would be somewhere towards the middle of the creativity bell curve.</p>

<p><strong>The kind of dreaming I'm talking about is long, clear or multi episode dreams lasting over 5 minutes</strong> as opposed to fragments and vague impressions of activity. Let's say 2+ dreams per night.</p>

<ul>
<li>Do highly creative people dream more and recall more than average or analytical people?</li>
<li>Does active interest in dreams as a child or teenager(like keeping a dream journal) influences creativity as an adult?</li>
</ul>

<p>I found some evidence to support that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incubation_%28psychology%29#The_Cases_For_and_Against_Dreams_Being_Useful_In_Problem-Solving">dreams and creativity are related, particularly in visual fields, like graphic design</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Barrett also interviewed modern artists and scientists about their use
  of their dreams, documenting dramatic anecdotes including Nobel Prizes
  and MacArthur 'genius grants' whose ideas originated in dreams.[6] Her
  research concludes that while anything—math, musical composition,
  business dilemmas—may get solved during dreaming, the <strong>two areas dreams
  are especially likely to help</strong> are 1) anything where vivid
  visualization contributes to the solution, whether in artistic design
  or invention of 3-D technological devices and 2) any problem where the
  solution lies in thinking outside the box—i.e. where the person is
  stuck because the conventional wisdom on how to approach the problem
  is wrong.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Another <a href="http://www2.ucsc.edu/dreams/Library/domhoff_2000d.html">example from an overview of the modern theory of dream content</a>: </p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Second, dreams cannot be the guardians of sleep if there are people who can sleep even though they do not dream, and we now have reason to believe there are such people, including young children (Foulkes, 1999), leucotomized schizophrenics (Jus et al., 1973), neurology patients suffering from parietal lobe injuries (Solms, 1997), and <strong>perhaps normal adults with weak visuospatial skills (Butler &amp; Watson, 1985)</strong>.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Another example comes from <a href="http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0452287812">Nancy Andersen's book "the Creative Brain"</a>, in which she suggests that highly creative people, like Issac Newton, Albert Einstein, Virgina Wolf, etc may be capable of thinking in a very different ways from ordinary people. She suggests this may be due to increased or different communication between their centers of the brain responsible for combining information and sensory input. It appears to me that dreaming is very related to this kind of information assimilation. </p>

<p>Another example from <a href="http://www2.ucsc.edu/dreams/Library/domhoff_2001a.html">Domhoff's neurocognitive theory of dreaming</a>. Spatial construction is required for "traditional" creative venues, like painting, sculpture and architecture. </p>

<blockquote>
  <p>For example, the complete loss of dreaming in adults due to injuries
  to either inferior parietal lobe, when placed alongside the finding
  that <strong>increased dream reporting in young children correlates with
  visuospatial skills</strong>, suggests that the ability to dream in children
  depends in part upon the development of the neural network for spatial
  construction centered in the parietal lobes.</p>
</blockquote>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-11-24T09:03:58.810Z
Creativity requires some intelligence and so does analytical thinking. I'm a very strictly analytical and sceptic person and yet I play guitar and love [playing with colors](http://math.stackexchange.com/q/996948/60941). You're making unfair assumptions.
Tomáš Zato
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-11-24T09:04:57.023Z
Also everybody has a lot dreams per night. But you only remember those that took place minutes before you woke up. Or so I had read.
Tomáš Zato
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-11-24T16:57:25.670Z
How many dreams do you remember per night? My question is about people who are feeling strong enough about creativity to become artists, designers, inventors or otherwise "create" stuff. An analytical person would choose a profession more along the lines of working with numbers or data.
Alex Stone
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-11-24T17:53:12.040Z
You're probably thinking being an artist is something metaphysic while being an analytical person means you're a computer. I'd like to avoid a second comment thread today, could we [chat about it](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/18933/analytical-and-creative-people) instead please? I'd like to discuss this matter with you.
Tomáš Zato
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-08-14T13:16:13.957Z
This is an interesting question. However, there are some challenges in answering it. How does one measure variances in dreams? I can't think of any way to do this. Research based on verbal recollections of dreams the next day can never be accurate. A dream cannot be translated accurately to words. Besides, dreams are interwoven with personal feelings, memories, attitudes, etc. So you can't really tell anyone how creative your dreams are.
You could possibly measure dreams by looking at brain scans showing activity in different brain regions, but I'm not sure how accurate it would be.
Berit Larsen
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-08-17T14:35:24.543Z
@BeritLarsen  From personal dream journaling, noticeable differences exist even for the same person. There's variance from dull, hazy recollection of individual scenes to fully blown "more real than reality" clarity. Then there's variance in content - from mundane "I'm going to classroom" kind of dream to "having superpower adventures on an alien planet"dreams. I'm interested if creative people have more of a certain kind of dreams.
Alex Stone
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-01-22T14:04:34.003Z
This intrigues me. I am a mixed dreamer where I go through dry spells and monsoon seasons of dreams. Not "all the time", but frequently enough to give me pause, I have dreams where my creativity within the dream is off the charts. I normally consider myself horrible in creativity and more the analytical type favoring IT professions. I don't have great recall of these creative bursts but the morning after and sometimes the next day I am absolutely astounded that I came up with the solution or scenario in my dream. It is literally as you described.
Mark Alen
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-01-24T15:22:53.743Z
A lot of people claim to never dream. It's a question i often ask. I noticed that something seems to miss in the life of those who don't dream. They can't let go something.  It's possible dreams help creativity instead of the reverse
ceillac
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-12-04T15:35:57.257Z
I've recently watched a lecture by a sleep researcher, and he said that according to a set of experiments, when we sleep brain gets signals from internal receptors and passes them to some area that organizes maintenance where needed. And dream is our consciousness getting those signals (as re-routing mechanism isn't perfect) and interpreting them. If it is indeed true, then what we see in our dreams depends on how our brain interprets data, and that's a matter of experience and training. Creativeness certainly affects this, but in what way, I don't know.
Alissa
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-04-21T13:38:25.990Z
Certainly creativity is typified as high openness. Openness to experience in turn correlates positively with dream recall (by which I don't mean having more dreams persé) according to the following study: Watson, David (2003). "To dream, perchance to remember: Individual differences in dream recall".
LPenguin
<cognitive-psychology><dreams><creativity>
Do highly creative people dream more and/or differently than ordinary people?
Alex Stone
# Do highly creative people dream more and/or differently than ordinary people?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2014-11-23)

Everybody dreams, and I'm trying to understand if there is a cause and effect relationship between ability to dream and recall dreams and creativity as an adult.

I would **define the kind of creativity** I'm talking about as creating art, designing products, inventing and making original stuff. These people are at the upper end of a bell curve of creativity or are outside the curve completely (extraordinary creative genius). This is in contrast to ordinary people who would be somewhere towards the middle of the creativity bell curve.

**The kind of dreaming I'm talking about is long, clear or multi episode dreams lasting over 5 minutes** as opposed to fragments and vague impressions of activity. Let's say 2+ dreams per night.

* Do highly creative people dream more and recall more than average or analytical people?
* Does active interest in dreams as a child or teenager(like keeping a dream journal) influences creativity as an adult?

I found some evidence to support that [dreams and creativity are related, particularly in visual fields, like graphic design](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incubation_%28psychology%29#The_Cases_For_and_Against_Dreams_Being_Useful_In_Problem-Solving):

> Barrett also interviewed modern artists and scientists about their use
> of their dreams, documenting dramatic anecdotes including Nobel Prizes
> and MacArthur 'genius grants' whose ideas originated in dreams.[6] Her
> research concludes that while anything—math, musical composition,
> business dilemmas—may get solved during dreaming, the **two areas dreams
> are especially likely to help** are 1) anything where vivid
> visualization contributes to the solution, whether in artistic design
> or invention of 3-D technological devices and 2) any problem where the
> solution lies in thinking outside the box—i.e. where the person is
> stuck because the conventional wisdom on how to approach the problem
> is wrong.

Another [example from an overview of the modern theory of dream content](http://www2.ucsc.edu/dreams/Library/domhoff_2000d.html):

> Second, dreams cannot be the guardians of sleep if there are people who can sleep even though they do not dream, and we now have reason to believe there are such people, including young children (Foulkes, 1999), leucotomized schizophrenics (Jus et al., 1973), neurology patients suffering from parietal lobe injuries (Solms, 1997), and **perhaps normal adults with weak visuospatial skills (Butler & Watson, 1985)**.

Another example comes from [Nancy Andersen's book "the Creative Brain"](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0452287812), in which she suggests that highly creative people, like Issac Newton, Albert Einstein, Virgina Wolf, etc may be capable of thinking in a very different ways from ordinary people. She suggests this may be due to increased or different communication between their centers of the brain responsible for combining information and sensory input. It appears to me that dreaming is very related to this kind of information assimilation.

Another example from [Domhoff's neurocognitive theory of dreaming](http://www2.ucsc.edu/dreams/Library/domhoff_2001a.html). Spatial construction is required for "traditional" creative venues, like painting, sculpture and architecture.

> For example, the complete loss of dreaming in adults due to injuries
> to either inferior parietal lobe, when placed alongside the finding
> that **increased dream reporting in young children correlates with
> visuospatial skills**, suggests that the ability to dream in children
> depends in part upon the development of the neural network for spatial
> construction centered in the parietal lobes.

**Tags:** cognitive-psychology, dreams, creativity

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Creativity requires some intelligence and so does analytical thinking. I'm a very strictly analytical and sceptic person and yet I play guitar and love [playing with colors](http://math.stackexchange.com/q/996948/60941). You're making unfair assumptions.  
> **username_1**: Also everybody has a lot dreams per night. But you only remember those that took place minutes before you woke up. Or so I had read.  
> **username_0**: How many dreams do you remember per night? My question is about people who are feeling strong enough about creativity to become artists, designers, inventors or otherwise "create" stuff. An analytical person would choose a profession more along the lines of working with numbers or data.  
> **username_1**: You're probably thinking being an artist is something metaphysic while being an analytical person means you're a computer. I'd like to avoid a second comment thread today, could we [chat about it](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/18933/analytical-and-creative-people) instead please? I'd like to discuss this matter with you.  
> **username_2**: This is an interesting question. However, there are some challenges in answering it. How does one measure variances in dreams? I can't think of any way to do this. Research based on verbal recollections of dreams the next day can never be accurate. A dream cannot be translated accurately to words. Besides, dreams are interwoven with personal feelings, memories, attitudes, etc. So you can't really tell anyone how creative your dreams are. You could possibly measure dreams by looking at brain scans showing activity in different brain regions, but I'm not sure how accurate it would be.  
> **username_0**: @BeritLarsen  From personal dream journaling, noticeable differences exist even for the same person. There's variance from dull, hazy recollection of individual scenes to fully blown "more real than reality" clarity. Then there's variance in content - from mundane "I'm going to classroom" kind of dream to "having superpower adventures on an alien planet"dreams. I'm interested if creative people have more of a certain kind of dreams.  
> **username_3**: This intrigues me. I am a mixed dreamer where I go through dry spells and monsoon seasons of dreams. Not "all the time", but frequently enough to give me pause, I have dreams where my creativity within the dream is off the charts. I normally consider myself horrible in creativity and more the analytical type favoring IT professions. I don't have great recall of these creative bursts but the morning after and sometimes the next day I am absolutely astounded that I came up with the solution or scenario in my dream. It is literally as you described.  
> **username_4**: A lot of people claim to never dream. It's a question i often ask. I noticed that something seems to miss in the life of those who don't dream. They can't let go something.  It's possible dreams help creativity instead of the reverse  
> **username_5**: I've recently watched a lecture by a sleep researcher, and he said that according to a set of experiments, when we sleep brain gets signals from internal receptors and passes them to some area that organizes maintenance where needed. And dream is our consciousness getting those signals (as re-routing mechanism isn't perfect) and interpreting them. If it is indeed true, then what we see in our dreams depends on how our brain interprets data, and that's a matter of experience and training. Creativeness certainly affects this, but in what way, I don't know.  
> **username_6**: Certainly creativity is typified as high openness. Openness to experience in turn correlates positively with dream recall (by which I don't mean having more dreams persé) according to the following study: Watson, David (2003). "To dream, perchance to remember: Individual differences in dream recall".  

---

## 1 answers

### Answer by username_7 on 2017-12-17. Score: 3

There are some studies that seem to support your suggestion e.g.:

* [Dream reports and creative tendencies in students of the arts, sciences, and engineering](http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0022463) (paywalled, so I'm quoting the abstract):

  > 105 students of arts, sciences, and engineering were asked to report a dream and to take a test which measures independence of judgment and relates to creativity. 4 predictions were stated: (a) (confirmed)—the proportion of dream recallers would be greatest among art students and least among engineering students; (b) (partially confirmed)—dream imaginativeness would be greatest among art students and least among engineering students; [...]
* [Creativity and Dream Recall](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/j.2162-6057.1995.tb01420.x/abstract) (same as above):

  > The literature on creativity and dream recall often found significant positive correlations between measures of creativity and dream recall frequency (DRF). The present study investigated the relation between creative interests and DRF in detail. The findings confirmed the results reported in the literature, according to which persons with visual and verbal creative skills recalled more dreams. It is suggested that the visual memory may serve as a mediator variable in the relation between creativity and DRF.

---

Yet dream recall is a complex topic. As you noted in your comment, it might be different for a single person from night to night. It also seems to be inlfuenced by a lot of factors. Schredl et al. name some of them in [Factors of home dream recall: a structural equation model](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1365-2869.2003.00344.x/full):

* Personality measures
* Creativity/fantasy
* Visual memory
* Sleep behavior
* Stress measures

Yet there are still a lot of factors more to be included, like demographic factors, attitude towards dreams, medication and so on (Schredl has written [a lot](https://scholar.google.de/scholar?q=schredl%20dream%20recall) about dream recall, if you want to dig deeper).

So I'd summarize creativity might increase dream recall but it's only a small part of a bigger picture.


---

