Journal of Sleep Research
June 9, 2026
Julia Wiesenthal, Michael Schredl
ABSTRACT Although about 5% of the German population report having nightmares at least once a week, nightmares are inadequately diagnosed and treated. We therefore examined how people in the general population cope with nightmares in everyday life. The present study aimed to examine the influence of Big Five personality traits on nightmare‐coping behaviour. In an online survey of 411...
Psychology of Music
March 10, 2026
Jan Mauren, Michael Schredl
Music and dreams have been recurring and meaningful themes throughout human history. Empirical research on the topic of music in dreams is limited, particularly when it comes to studies involving participants with professional musical training. In this study, 37 music professionals participated, reporting a total of 151 dreams in a 14-day dream diary and completing questionnaires to assess...
University Library Heidelberg
January 26, 2026
Michael Schredl, Anja S. Göritz
The continuity hypothesis of dreaming states that dreams reflect waking life, however, research has also shown that dreams can affect waking life, e.g., creativity, daytime mood. So far, factors that are associated with the effect of dreams on waking life have been rarely studied. Overall, 2492 persons (1437 woman, 1055 men) with a mean age of 47.75 ± 14.41 years participated in the study. The...
Imagination, Cognition and Personality
September 1, 2025
Michael Schredl, Anja S. Göritz
The basic definition of lucid dreaming is that the dreamer knows that s/he is dreaming while still dreaming. However, the skills within the lucid dream, e.g., regarding dream control, vary considerably from dreamer to dreamer. The present study tested the psychometric properties of the Lucid Dreaming Skills Questionnaire (LUSK) in a sample of 1267 persons. The findings indicate that the LUSK...
European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience
June 1, 2025
Michael Schredl, Elisabeth Anzenberger, Claudia Schilling
Previous research indicated that the prevalence of frequent nightmares and/or the presence of a nightmare disorder is quite high in patients with mental disorders. In the present study, 75 randomly selected psychiatric inpatients were interviewed and completed questionnaires regarding nightmares, sleep, and psychopathology. The percentage of patients with nightmares once per week or more often...
Journal of Homosexuality
October 31, 2024
Johann Dietze, Michael Schredl, Ulrike A. Gisch
Although numerous individual factors influencing dream content have been explored, research on the link between sexual orientation and dreaming remains limited. This study examined this relationship among 119 German-speaking men (mean age = 31.97 years), including 55 homosexual and 64 heterosexual participants. Participants completed a questionnaire on their waking life sexuality and dreams and...
Journal of Sleep Research
July 1, 2024
Michael Schredl, Albrecht Vorster, Michael J. Schmid et al.
1 citation
Nightmares, defined as extremely dysphoric dreams, can cause significant distress in everyday life if they occur frequently. Their aetiology is based on a disposition-stress model. As elite athletes often experience high stress levels, the present study investigated factors that might be associated with nightmare frequency in a large cohort of 2297 Swiss elite athletes (1066 women, 1231 men)...
Somnologie - Schlafforschung und Schlafmedizin
December 8, 2023
Michael Schredl
Abstract Research indicates that adults suffering from nightmares rarely seek professional help for their condition. However, nothing is known about the help-seeking behavior in adolescents with frequent nightmares. In a sample of 100 adolescents (50 female, 50 male) with a mean age of 15.30 ± 0.80 years, it was found that none of them ever sought professional help for nightmares, even though...
Somnologie
September 1, 2023
Emma Peters, Daniel Erlacher, Friedrich Müller et al.
AbstractThis study aimed to investigate the efficacy of using hypnotic enhancement of auditory suggestion to induce lucid dreams in inexperienced individuals. Lucid dreaming, a state in which the dreamer becomes aware of their dream state, provides opportunities for personal exploration, sports, and clinical applications. However, the rarity of lucid dreams poses a challenge to scientific...
Imagination, Cognition and Personality
December 1, 2022
Michael Schredl, Anellka Remedios, Silvia Marin-Dragu et al.
8 citations
Dream recall frequency and lucid dream frequency showed large inter-individual differences that are partly related to personality dimensions. However, as dream research is a small field, independent studies are necessary to build a solid empirical foundation. The present online survey included 1,537 participants (1150 women, 387 men) with a mean age of 35.1 ± 15.8 years. Whereas the...
Clocks & Sleep
September 1, 2022
Michael Schredl, Claudia Schilling
Sleep-related metacognitions play a role in the etiology of insomnia and are distressing while falling asleep. Although similar concepts, such as thought suppression, have been studied in the context of dreaming, the relationship between sleep-related metacognitions and more negatively toned dreaming due to stressful pre-sleep experiences has yet to be studied. Overall, 919 patients with...
Imagination, Cognition and Personality
April 20, 2022
Michael Schredl, Judith Zumstein, Sven Baumann et al.
Previous research identified personality and neurophysiological traits that are associated with inter-individual differences in lucid dreaming frequency. The present study investigated the question as to whether sensory processing sensitivity is related to lucid dreaming. Overall, 1,807 persons (1,008 woman, 799 men) with a mean age of 47.75 ± 14.41 years completed the German High Sensitive...
Pastoral Psychology
2022
Kelly Bulkeley, Michael Schredl
This study considers the relationship between dreaming and race in light of the public protests following the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020. Findings are presented from an online survey about dreams and the Black Lives Movement (BLM) gathered from 4,947 demographically diverse American adults sampled between June 15 and June 19, 2020. The results show that the people most likely to...
Clocks & Sleep
November 24, 2021
Michael Schredl
Many dream content analytic studies focus on dream characters, animals, social interactions and so on, but they rarely analyze the frequency of everyday objects in dreams. In the present paper, the frequency and phenomenology of clock dreams in a dream series of 12,476 dreams of a single male dreamer was analyzed. The clock dreams (0.74% of all dreams) show a variety of contexts not only...
Somnologie
September 1, 2021
Katharina Lüth, Judith Schmitt, Michael Schredl
Abstract Background Since people with nightmares rarely seek help, low-threshold interventions and self-help methods are needed. Among different treatment approaches for nightmares, imagery rehearsal therapy (IRT) is the method of choice. Objective In the current study, the authors tested whether IRT is also effective when applied in a short version, within the scope of a single session of...
Frontiers in Psychology
April 20, 2021
Ana Guerrero-Gomez, Isabel Nöthen-Garunja, Michael Schredl et al.
13 citations
According to the continuity hypothesis of dreaming and contemporary psychodynamic approaches, dreams reflect waking life. The aim of the present study was to explore the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and dreaming in adolescents. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in Italy, Romania and Croatia involving 2,105 secondary school students (69% girls, mean age 15.6 ± 2.1 years; 31%...
Philosophy and the Mind Sciences
April 15, 2021
Remington Mallett, Michelle Carr, Martin Freegard et al.
7 citations
Dream lucidity, or being aware that one is dreaming while dreaming, is not an all-or-none phenomenon. Often, subjects report being some variant of “a little lucid” as opposed to completely or not at all. As recent neuroimaging work begins to elucidate the neural underpinnings of lucid experience, understanding subtle phenomenological variation within lucid dreams is essential. Here, we focus on...
University Library Heidelberg
January 14, 2021
Michael Schredl
The continuity hypothesis of dreaming postulates that dreams reflect waking life, e.g. preoccupations, experiences, thoughts; however, other topics like seasonal changes have been studied very rarely. A long dream series recorded between 1984 and 2015 (over 30 years) including 11,808 dreams showed that “cold” elements like snow, ice, and hail occurred less often over time and, thus, indicates...
Animals : an open access journal from MDPI
October 19, 2020
Michael Schredl, Christian Bailer, Muriel Sophie Weigel et al.
Dogs have been close human companions for millennia and one would expect-according to the continuity hypothesis of dreaming-that dogs are also quite common in dreams. Previous studies showed that the percentages of dreams that include dogs range from about 1.5% to 5%, but studies relating waking-life experiences with dogs with dreams about dogs have not been carried out. In total, 1695 persons...
BORIS
October 9, 2020
Daniel Erlacher, Michael Schredl, Tadas Stumbrys
12 citations
Anecdotal evidence that lucid dreaming might contribute to mental and physical health has been widely reported in the literature. Empirical research, though, is scarce. A brief questionnaire eliciting self-perceived benefits of lucid dreaming on mental and physical health had been completed by 386 participants who had lucid dream experiences. About 90% of the participants reported some benefit...
Dreaming
September 1, 2020
Michael Schredl, Kelly Bulkeley
66 citations
This study analyzes the responses of 3,031 U S adults who, in early May of 2020, completed an online survey regarding their dreams and the COVID-19 outbreak The results indicate that those people most strongly affected by the pandemic also reported the strongest effects on their dream life (heightened dream recall, more negatively toned dreams, and pandemic-related dreams) Pronounced negative...
Clocks & Sleep
September 1, 2020
Michael Schredl, Anja S. Göritz
Chronotype refers to individual differences in sleep timing ("owls" and "larks") and "eveningness" has been associated with nightmares. However, it has not been tested as to whether neuroticism mediates this relationship. Urbanicity refers to being raised in an urban region and/or currently living in an urban region and is associated with heightened risk for developing mental disorders, and...
Consciousness and Cognition
August 1, 2020
Abigail Stocks, Michelle Carr, Remington Mallett et al.
33 citations
Lucid dreaming is a unique phenomenon with potential applications for therapeutic interventions. Few studies have investigated the effects of lucidity on an individual's waking mood, which could have valuable implications for improving psychological wellbeing. The current experiment aims to investigate whether the experience of lucidity enhances positive waking mood, and whether lucidity is...
Imagination, Cognition and Personality
June 17, 2020
Michael Schredl
A variety of factors contribute to nightmare distress; in addition to nightmare frequency also beliefs about nightmares can be associated with heightened nightmare distress. The study investigated the personality correlates of beliefs about nightmares and whether these beliefs mediate the relationship between gender, neuroticism, and nightmare distress. Overall, 1214 persons (716 women, 498...
Journal of Sleep Research
June 11, 2020
Michael Schredl, Anja S. Göritz
10 citations
Models of nightmare aetiology postulate an interaction between trait and state factors. However, most of the studies that support these models have been cross-sectional and longitudinal studies are scarce. The present data were obtained from N = 888 participants completing two online dream studies carried out independently with the same online panel 2 years apart. Nightmare frequency declined...