Individual and Situational Predictors of Threatening Dream Content During the COVID ‐19 Pandemic
Journal of Sleep Research April 2, 2026 Ville Loukola, J T Tuominen, Eveliina Malinen et al.
Individual factors, such as low life satisfaction and fewer positive emotions, are better predictors of threatening dream content during the COVID-19 pandemic than daily situational factors like worry or media consumption. In a large Finnish sample of prospective dream diaries, lower life satisfaction was the only statistically significant predictor of threatening events in dreams, while experiencing fewer positive emotions in the past two weeks was the only significant predictor of pandemic-related threatening events. The findings suggest that the tendency to have threatening dreams is more a stable trait than a daily fluctuating feature, supporting the threat simulation theory's idea that individual differences in simulating threats interact with daily experiences.