A researcher investigated whether difficulties in dream analysis could affect conclusions like those drawn by Freud (1918). Twenty adults wrote an account of a dream within five minutes of waking. One week later, without seeing their first account, they wrote about the same dream from memory. Three analysts then independently identified the latent content of each later account.
| Measure | Result |
|---|---|
| Mean proportion of details from the first account that remained in the account written one week later | 56% |
| Number of later accounts for which all three analysts identified the same latent content | 2 out of 20 |
Using both results in the table, explain why Freud's conclusions from the Wolfman study should be treated with caution.
81 exam-style questions on OCR GCSE Psychology 6.2 Theories/Explanations: The Nature of Dreaming, covering 6.2.1 Freudian dreaming: unconscious and repression, 6.2.2 Freudian dreaming: wish fulfilment and dream content; criticisms, 6.2.3 Freudian Theory research study: Freud (1918), 6.2.4 Activation Synthesis: REM sleep and the brain, 6.2.5 Activation Synthesis: pons, cortex and synthesis; criticisms, and 6.2.6 Activation Synthesis research study: Williams et al. (1992). Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.