I know how you felt last night, or do I? Self- and external ratings of emotions in REM sleep dreams.
Consciousness and Cognition April 1, 2014 Pilleriin Sikka, Katja Valli, Tiina Virta et al.
Emotional experiences in dreams may appear inconsistent across studies because of whether dream emotions are self-rated or judged by external raters. In a sleep-laboratory study, 17 participants were awakened from REM sleep and provided oral dream reports, then rated their own emotions using a modified scale. External judges rated the same reports with the same scale. Self-ratings yielded higher estimates of emotional dreams, positively valenced dreams, the number of positive and negative emotions per dream, and various discrete emotions compared to external ratings. The discrepancy appears largely due to underrepresentation of positive emotions in dream reports when judged externally.