Construction Module: ​Empathy Interview

Karrigan McClellan & Nov. 6th, 2020

What is your Area of Interest?

The study of Dreams and how they change from person to person.

Who will you interview?

My 17 year old sister, Emilie McClellan

Interview Questions

1.) How do you normally dream?

2.) Do you remember your dreams regularly?
3.) What is your personal ratio of nightmares and dreams?
4.) Can you control aspects of your dreams?
5.) Do you dream in color?
6.) Can you run/scream in your dreams?

When will your interview take place?

November 8th, 2020 1:00pm

Recording Interview Transcript

-Begin-
Me: “Hi thank you for agreeing to an interview today. I just had a couple of questions for you
about dreams and how you dream. Let’s get started: My first question is how do you normally
dream?”
Emilie: “Uh, usually I spend, yah know, all six hours that I’m sleeping, uh, not dreaming? And
then within the like 15 minutes that I hit the snooze button and have to get up I have really vivid
dreams.”
Me: “That's interesting.”
Emilie: “Yep.”
Me: “Do you regularly remember your dreams?”
Emilie: “No.”
Me: “...Okay. What is your personal ratio to nightmare dreams like do you have more dreams
and nightmares or are they just kind of all…”
Emilie: “I just have really realistic dreams of like, things and people and situations that might
actually happen that are just usually kinda unfortunate so like, not a nightmare but just like
annoying happenstance which sucks. I get sleep paralysis a lot! If that counts.”
Me: “Oh that’s weird, I didn’t even factor in sleep paralysis.”
Emilie: “Good one.”
Me: “Does that affect your dreams at all?”
Emilie: “Nah I don’t usually have dreams, I just kinda wake up in the middle of the night and
can’t move.”
Me: “Weird. Interesting! Can you control aspects of your dreams when you dream, like lucid
dreaming?”
Emilie: “Yeah if I like fall, if I get up and hit the snooze button right? And then I go back to sleep
and then I’m dreaming, and then my snooze goes off AGAIN, and then I hit it again and then I
go back to sleep again and then my dream picks up where I left off. And then it's usually a good,
good time.”
Me: “Ah, do you dream in color?”
Emilie: “yeah?”
Me: ”Some people dream in black and white that's why I wondered.
Emilie: “Uh, yeah I think I… yeah I dream in color.”
Me: “Ok, and for my last question, can you run or scream in your dreams?”
Emilie: “Yeah.”
Me: “ Interesting. Ok, I know that's the least common, um, ability, I guess, in dreams, is to be
able to run or scream.”
Emilie: “Uh... yeah, I can do that. I can also, like, feel things sometimes like, it’s kinda morbid,
but one time I had a dream where Sunny [our dog] got shot and I could, like, feel the blood in
my hands, and like the warmth of it. Cuz I was holding her cuz, I was her best friend. Uh, but
yeah, cuz we had to like run from bad guys which is why they were shooting at us and
accidentally shot her so but yeah, like we were running usually I don’t really scream in general,
but, like, I raise my voice, so I can do that.”
Me: “Ok.”
Emilie: “But also I don’t like, like I said, don’t really have nightmares that are, like, freaky friday
scary, so I, like, just… get annoyed and raise my voice.”
Me: “That's fair. Alright well thank you, uh, for letting me interview you today!
Emilie: “...what kind of class is this for?”
*Laughter*
-End-

Summary
 The point of this research is to gather different levels of data in how people
dream. For this interview I asked the standard questions about dreams that one would
usually hear, “can you run in dreams? Have you ever been able to control your
dreams?”. When interviewing Emilie, she brought up that she doesn’t really have good
dreams or bad dreams, just dreams about life events. This is interesting to me because
in my experience, dreams have been very whimsical or fantastical with a strong
distinction between good and bad. It makes me start to wonder about how dreams
come about, and, from a psychology standpoint, if being more right brained or left
brained affect the outcome and/or general theme of a persons’ dreams. I happen to be
more right brained, and my sister is definitely more left, which is why I formed the
hypothesis I did.