Imagination Cognition and Personality
February 21, 2012
Daniel Erlacher, Tadas Stumbrys, Michael Schredl
36 citations
About 57% of German athletes have experienced a lucid dream at least once, 24% have one or more per month, and 9% of lucid dreamers have used the dream state to practice sport skills. Most of those athletes felt that such practice improved their waking performance. The prevalence of lucid dreaming among professional athletes is similar to the general population, but the proportion of lucid dreams relative to all dreams is nearly twice as high (14.5% vs. 7.5%). The findings suggest lucid dreaming offers a unique form of mental rehearsal for sports.
Imagination Cognition and Personality
December 20, 2016
Tadas Stumbrys, Daniel Erlacher
28 citations
In lucid dreams, where the dreamer knows they are dreaming, full control over the dream body is possible in about two thirds of cases, while control of the dream environment and maintaining dream awareness are possible in less than half of cases. An online survey of 528 respondents, 386 of whom had lucid dream experience, found that higher lucid dream frequency, dispositional mindfulness while awake, and younger age predict greater dream control. Cultivating mindfulness may help lucid dreamers develop more control, but further longitudinal research is needed.
Imagination Cognition and Personality
September 1, 2004
Richard J. Stevenson, Trevor I. Case
26 citations
Olfactory dreams—smelling in dreams—are uncommon but real, brief, and emotionally charged, resembling everyday odors. People who report such dreams are better at identifying real odors, an effect not explained by motivation or attention. The findings suggest that olfactory imagery exists but its occurrence depends on the strength of connections between olfactory and semantic memory, which are typically weak in olfaction.
Imagination Cognition and Personality
March 8, 2020
Alexandre Lemyre, Lidia Légaré-Bergeron, Roxanne B. Landry et al.
14 citations
Lucid dreamers use five categories of strategies to control dreams and produce impossible outcomes: verbal commands, manipulating dream objects or the environment, using the dream body, managing emotions, and other methods. 35 specific strategies were identified from 107 adults who lucid dream at least once a year. Some strategies are used during the dream, while three are applied while awake. These findings may inform lucid dream therapy for chronic nightmares.
Imagination Cognition and Personality
September 1, 2000
A. Kjellgren, T. Norlander
14 citations
Former illegal drug users report experiences that align with Stanislav Grof's expanded model of the human unconscious. Among 16 anonymous former users surveyed, all described some experiences matching Grof's descriptions. Transpersonal experiences were more common among those who were heavy users, those who identified as spiritual seekers, and those who engaged in ritual or mental preparation before use. The paper also outlines Grof's model and provides context on global psychedelic research.
Imagination Cognition and Personality
May 7, 2026
Yui Yoshioka
People with higher alexithymia—difficulty identifying and describing feelings—tend to have more negative dream emotions, more frequent nightmares, and greater nightmare distress. In a sample of 282 Japanese adults, those with higher alexithymia scores reported more intense anger, sadness, and confusion in their most recent dream, but no difference in positive dream emotions. The findings suggest that waking emotional difficulties carry over into dream content, supporting the continuity hypothesis and affect network dysfunction model.
Imagination Cognition and Personality
February 13, 2026
Shweta Sunil, Manoj Kumar Sharma, Nitin Anand
Reality Shifting (RS), a practice that gained popularity after the COVID-19 pandemic, involves belief in multiple realities. Focus groups and an online survey with 59 participants aged 17 to 30 suggest that RS may help satisfy novelty seeking needs through fantasy proneness and parasocial relationships. Social media aids understanding and resource seeking for the practice but is linked to negative consequences such as excessive use and adverse online experiences. The findings have implications for understanding how social media facilitates access to alternate experiences and may affect patterns and frequency of social media use.
Imagination Cognition and Personality
October 1, 2009
People with a highly sensitive personality report more mystical experiences and a greater degree of altered states of consciousness during a 45-minute session in a flotation tank than those with low sensitivity. Highly sensitive participants also showed more stress and anxiety upon arrival, but the two groups did not differ in depression or optimism. The finding suggests that sensory isolation in a flotation tank may elicit stronger subjective effects in individuals who are more sensitive to environmental stimuli.
Imagination Cognition and Personality
March 1, 1994
Raters who scored higher on a measure of absorption—a trait reflecting deep engagement with experiences—identified fewer instances of altered states of consciousness (ASC) in others' introspective reports. A negative correlation of r = −0.48 was found between a rater's absorption score and the number of ASC instances they assessed. This suggests that individual differences in how raters evaluate subjective experience may stem from their own level of absorption, with more absorptive raters applying a stricter threshold for what counts as an altered state.
Imagination Cognition and Personality
September 1, 1992
A review of literature on how often altered states of consciousness occur finds that phenomena such as hallucinations, peak experiences, mystical states, hypnotic-like experiences, and out-of-the-body experiences are rather common in normal populations. Few studies directly estimate occurrence rates, so indirect studies were included. The author emphasizes that no other clear conclusions can be drawn from existing data and calls for further empirical research.