When life is but a dream: Does transliminality predict continuity of thought across the sleep-wake cycle?

People who are highly fantasy-prone, absorptive, or hypnotizable often have waking thoughts that feel bizarre or dreamlike, suggesting a continuity between dreaming and waking thoughts that may vary by individual. The personality trait transliminality—linked to heightened awareness of subliminal material—was hypothesized to predict this continuity. In a week-long experience-sampling study of undergraduates, transliminality did not predict overall continuity of thought. Exploratory analyses indicated it predicted greater continuity in bizarreness, but this did not survive correction for multiple comparisons. Transliminality was positively associated with waking thoughts that were more bizarre, interesting, and novel. The findings advance understanding of how personality relates to thought phenomenology and suggest avenues for research on well-being, creativity, and behavior.

Study at a glance

Abstract

People with fantasy proneness and dispositions towards absorption and hypnotizability encounter waking thoughts that are particularly bizarre or dreamlike in nature. This suggests not only a continuity between dreaming and waking thoughts—what we refer to as continuity of thought—but perhaps stable individual differences in continuity of thought. The personality trait transliminality, which has been linked with increased awareness of subliminally-presented material, may underlie these dispositions and thus shows unique promise for predicting continuity of thought. In a sample of undergraduate students, we measured transliminality using the Revised Transliminality Scale (RTS) and then used experience sampling to capture the phenomenological qualities of dreaming and waking thoughts for one week. We examined evidence for continuity of thought across the sleep-wake cycle, examined the connection between transliminality and dreamlike thoughts in wakefulness, and assessed whether transliminality predicts greater overall continuity of thought. Results showed transliminality was unrelated to overall continuity of thought, however further exploratory analyses showed transliminality predicted greater continuity in bizarreness of thought—though this effect did not hold up after controlling for multiple comparisons. Moreover, transliminality was positively associated with waking thoughts that were more bizarre, interesting and novel. Overall, this work advances understanding on how personality may relate to phenomenology of thought, and opens the door for future research to assess how these personality-phenomenology relations may impact wellbeing, creativity, or behavior more generally.