Dream-Sharing and Human Self-Domestication
September 9, 2021 M. Blagrove, J. Lockheart preprint
Dreams may have evolved to enhance empathy and group bonding when shared with others, rather than serving functions only during sleep. The authors propose that dream-sharing in history and pre-history would have increased group cohesiveness and mutual understanding, and that the engaging nature of dream content was selected for during human social evolution. Dream-sharing likely interacted with cultural practices and developed alongside storytelling, utilizing common neural mechanisms. This process may have contributed to Human Self-Domestication, a proposed driver of the evolution of human prosociality and reduced emotional reactivity. The authors argue that within-sleep theories of dream function rely on correlational findings and untested mechanisms, whereas post-sleep effects of dream-sharing are testable.