Bulkeley speculated on the reasons for his results in his original paper. He offered two very different scenarios that would both account for his data. He speculates that both interpretations probably have some merit.
Scenario I:The dreams of the people on the political right reveal them to be insecure, anxious, conflict-ridden, and emotionally repressed. When they are not terrified of imaginary threats they cling to the comforts of the status quo. They seek a kind of power through their political views that they lack within their deeper selves. By contrast, the dreams of people on the political left show them to be creative, progressive, and imaginative. They are confident in their abilities and willing to think beyond the boundaries of the present to envision new possibilities for the future. (Bulkeley, 2001)
Scenario II:The dreams of people on the political right reveal them to be highly attuned to the actual dangers and threats of the waking world. These people are realistic, grounded, honest about the frailties of human nature in the face of danger, and appreciative of the good things in present-day life. By contrast, the dreams of people on the political left show them to be irrational, naïve, utopian, and deluded by their own fantasies. These people are out of touch with the real world, and they wish for powers they do not have in actuality. (Bulkeley, 2001)
Since the press reported the 'nightmare' portion of the study many different people have reacted to the results. Bulkeley recently reported the following reactions to his study:
To my surprise and amusement, this little research factoid—“Republicans have more nightmares than Democrats”—was quickly seized by political partisans on both sides who did not hesitate to assert their interpretation of my findings. Terry McAuliffe, Democratic National Committee chairman [left], declared “If George W. Bush were the leader of my party, I’d have trouble sleeping at night, too.” Not to be outdone in the game of “dream spinning,” Kevin Sheridan of the Republican National Committee [right] quickly replied, “What do you expect after eight years of William Jefferson Clinton?” The reaction was not limited to politicians in the U.S.: Alexa McDonough, leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party (on the left side of the political spectrum), said she was not surprised by the findings of my study because true liberals follow their dreams to find creative solutions for problems: “The very essence of building a better world starts with dreaming…. Until we get politics being about chasing dreams again, we’re going to be causing people a lot of nightmares, and we’re mostly going to be implementing right-wing nightmares.” (Bulkeley, 2001, personal communication).
It's important that we see this study for what it is - an interesting pilot study that suggests some surprising relationships between political ideology and dreams. It makes some sense to me that the worldviews of conservatives and liberals would result in differences in their dreams. It is also possible that the findings of this study are random occurrences - that these only represent the odd dreams of this particular set of people. Until the appropriate statistics can be used on a larger sample, we can't interpret these results beyond these particular 56 people.
Source: McNulty, Jennifer. "Republicans Nearly Three Times As Likely As Democrats To Have Nightmares, Says Researcher" Association for the Study of Dreams press release, July 2001.
