When I was in eighth grade, I started my first course in basic psychology and soon became very interested in both interpreting dreams and harnessing the power of suggestion. Using my sister as a guinea pig (a willing one, though it really is amazing what my mother let me get away with in the name of education), I devised an experiment where I would wait until she fell asleep, then play her CDs with a different type of music each night. To avoid bias, I wouldn’t tell her ahead of time what I was going to play. When she woke up, she would jot down what she remembered about whatever she dreamed about, and I would chart this in my secret notebook against whatever music I’d played for her that night. The idea was to find out if specific types of music would affect the mood of her dreams.
While the original notebooks were lost long ago (the only specific result I clearly remember is that Pink Floyd made her really, really irritable), overall I found evidence that supported the theory linking music and mood. The experience was an important one for me. It gave me hands-on experience in using the scientific method, the ethical issues of using live test subjects, and most importantly that subliminal messages can have a profound affect on someone. These were themes that would return as I grew older and expanded my education, and something that continues to interest me as I continue to study the effects of advertising and propaganda.
On a personal level, the dream experiment was also one of the first projects I felt a strong interest in that my siblings went above and beyond in supporting me (and, thankfully, another theme that continues to this day).
thefourthcastle.com 