Is it possible to unlearn certain aspects of your personality? For example, could you learn to think differently about cultures or genders?

Well, sure, you could educate yourself on these cultures or on the similarities between people. But that can take a long time!

So here is the good news: Apparently a new study says that you could possibly modify deeply rooted ideas and attitudes in a much simply way: in your sleep!

The study researchers explain that this could be possible because older research indicates that it is possible to reactivate memories during sleep.

“We call this Targeted Memory Reactivation, because the sounds played during sleep could produce relatively better memory for information cued during sleep compared to information not cued during sleep,” describes senior study author Ken Paller. The professor of psychology at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences goes on to discuss that this training has been studied for a long time for the purpose of improving spatial memory—like learning locations of objects—and improving skill memory—like learning how to play an instrument or how to speak a new language.

Accordingly, the researchers say, “Sleep is a state in which the individual is without willful consciousness and therefore vulnerable to suggestion,” adding further that “The study should inspire research to solve remaining issues of targeted memory reactivation during sleep so that its mechanisms are fully understood.”

Lead study author Xiaoqing Hu, from the Department of Psychology at the University of Texas, in Austin—and his colleagues—have also extended the findings of this study to determine that the method can work not only for learned information but also to influence those implicit attitudes and ideals which lead to things like gender and racial bias!