Advertisers could come for your dreams, researchers warn

doi:10.1126/science.372.6549.1380

GSTDTAP > 气候变化

DOI	10.1126/science.372.6549.1380
	Advertisers could come for your dreams, researchers warn
	Sofia Moutinho
	2021-06-25
发表期刊	Science
出版年	2021
英文摘要	If you've ever crammed for an exam before bedtime, you may have tried something dream researchers have been attempting for decades: coaxing knowledge into dreams. Such efforts have had glimmers of success in the lab. Now, brands from Xbox to Coors are teaming up with a few scientists to attempt something similar: “Engineer” advertisements into consumers' dreams, via video and audio clips. This month, 40 sleep and dream researchers have pushed back in an online letter, calling for the regulation of commercial dream manipulation. “Dream incubation advertising is not some fun gimmick, but a slippery slope with real consequences,” they write on the op-ed website EOS. Dream incubation, in which images, sounds, or other sensory cues are used to shape nighttime visions, has a long history. Greeks who fell ill in the fourth century B.C.E., for example, would sleep on earthen beds in the temples of the god Asclepius, to prompt a state of dreaming in which their cure would be revealed. Modern science has opened a whole new world of possibilities. Researchers can now identify sleep stages when most people dream by monitoring brain waves, eye movements, and even snoring. They have also shown that external stimuli such as sounds, smells, and lights can alter dreams' content. This year, researchers communicated directly with lucid dreamers—people who are aware while they are dreaming—getting them to answer questions and solve math problems as they slept. “People are particularly vulnerable [to suggestion] when asleep,” says Adam Haar, a cognitive scientist and Ph.D. student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who co-authored the letter. Haar invented a glove that tracks sleep patterns and guides wearers to dream about specific subjects by playing audio cues during susceptible sleep stages. He has been contacted by three companies in the past 2 years, including Microsoft and two airlines, asking for his help on dream incubation projects. He helped with one game-related project, but wasn't comfortable participating in advertising campaigns. Work by Harvard University dream researcher Deirdre Barrett has also attracted corporate attention. In a 1993 study, she asked 66 students to select an academic or personal problem, write it down, and think about it each night for a week before bed. At the end of the study, nearly half reported dreaming about the problem. Similar work published in 2000 in Science , in which Harvard neuroscientists asked people to play several hours of the computer game Tetris , found that slightly more than 60% of the players reported dreaming about it. This year, Barrett consulted with the Molson Coors Beverage Company on an online advertising campaign that ran during the Super Bowl. Following her instructions, Coors, which has mountains and waterfalls on its logo, asked 18 people (12 of them paid actors) to watch a 90-second video featuring images of mountains and Coors beer right before falling asleep. When the participants awoke, five reported dreaming about the beer, according to a YouTube video documenting the effort. (The result remains unpublished.) Barrett says advertising strategies like these can get the public's attention, but will likely have little practical impact. “Of course you can play ads to someone as they are sleeping, but as far as having much effect, there is little evidence.” That doesn't mean that future attempts couldn't do better, says Antonio Zadra, a dream researcher at the University of Montreal who signed the statement. “We can see the waves forming a tsunami that will come, but most people are just sleeping on a beach unaware,” he says. The letter writers fear that because there are no specific regulations for in-dream advertising, companies might one day use smart speakers to detect people's sleep stages and play back sounds to influence their dreams and behaviors. “It is easy to envision a world in which smart speakers—40 million Americans currently have them in their bedrooms—become instruments of passive, unconscious overnight advertising, with or without our permission,” says the letter, which the writers have sent to U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D–MA). Such a world is worth preparing for, says Dennis Hirsch, a professor of law and a privacy expert at Ohio State University, Columbus. But he adds that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission Act, which prohibits “unfair or deceptive” business acts, likely already applies to using smart speakers for in-dream advertising. Tore Nielsen, a dream researcher at the University of Montreal who did not sign the statement, agrees that his colleagues have aired a “legitimate concern.” But he says interventions like this won't work unless the dreamer is aware of the manipulation—and willing to participate. “I am not overly concerned, just as I am not concerned that people can be hypnotized against their will,” he says. “[But] if it does indeed happen and no regulatory actions are taken to prevent it … whether or not our dreams can be modified would likely be the least of our worries.”
领域	气候变化 ; 资源环境
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引用统计
文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.173/C666/handle/2XK7JSWQ/334088
专题	气候变化资源环境科学
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Sofia Moutinho. Advertisers could come for your dreams, researchers warn[J]. Science,2021.
APA	Sofia Moutinho.(2021).Advertisers could come for your dreams, researchers warn.Science.
MLA	Sofia Moutinho."Advertisers could come for your dreams, researchers warn".Science (2021).