Predicting the affective tone of everyday dreams: A prospective study of state and trait variables.
Scientific Reports October 14, 2019 Eugénie Samson-Daoust, Sarah-Hélène Julien, Dominic Beaulieu-Prévost et al.
Emotions are common in dreams, but what causes them to vary from night to night and person to person is not well understood. This study tracked adults from the general population, measuring their personality and trauma history, then having them keep a three-week daily journal of dream recall, the emotional tone of their dreams, and their stress levels during the day and before sleep. Most of the differences in dream emotional valence were explained by within-person factors (night-to-night variations). Trait anxiety was the only factor that predicted dream emotions between people. The findings highlight the need for more precise measures and suggest that state variables, rather than stable traits, may best explain why dream emotions fluctuate.