Relationship and personality factors predict longitudinal changes in dream content
John Balch, Rachel Raider, Chanel Reed, Patrick Mcnamara
Scientific Reports May 3, 2025 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-025-99018-4 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Observational study Longitudinal Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Duration | Two weeks |
| Topics | Dreaming |
| Keywords | Dream Personality Content measure theory |
| Citations | 1 |
| Key findings | Daily interaction generally increases the likelihood of dreaming about known individuals, but this effect is reversed for important family members like parents or siblings, indicating a compensatory role for dreams in maintaining close relationships. |
Abstract
Researchers have established that dreams are intensely social and populated by diverse characters, including important figures from the dreamer's daily life. This study examines the types of characters that appeared in participant dreams over two weeks. We found that the majority of dreams include strangers in addition to known individuals, and that personality measures impact the likelihood of dreaming about different types of people. Appearance of known individuals from daily life in dreams was assessed by comparing dream reports to the core support networks of participants and daily diaries. We found that relationship-specific variables and daily interaction were important predictors of the likelihood of support network dream appearances. While daily interaction generally increases the likelihood of dream appearances, this effect is reversed for important family members like parents or siblings, indicating that dreams may play a compensatory role in maintaining relationships with close others when they are not present.
Comparable studies
Other observational and cohort studies on dreaming, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lucid Dreaming: a State of Consciousness with Features of Both Waking and Non-Lucid Dreaming Student volunteers trained to become lucid and signal lucidity with horizontal eye... | 2009 | Observational study | n = 6 |
| Nightmare Prevalence, Nightmare Distress, and Self-Reported Psychological Disturbance Young adults with a mean age of 20 years | 2002 | Prospective observational study | n = 116 |
| Long-term effects of extreme situational stress on sleep and dreaming Survivors of traumatic events who complained of sleep disturbances, compared with... | 1987 | Case-control study | n = 11 |
| The relationship of nightmare frequency and nightmare distress to well‐being Adults who reported dreams | 2004 | Observational cohort | n = 147 |
| Dreaming in NREM Sleep: A High-Density EEG Study of Slow Waves and Spindles Healthy human subjects | 2018 | Observational cohort | n = 14 |
Citations in the library
Cites 8
- ‘No Man is an Island’: Effects of social seclusion on social dream content and REM sleep British Journal of Psychology June 9, 2021
- Evidence for an emotional adaptive function of dreams: a cross-cultural study. Scientific Reports October 2, 2023
- Sleep and dream disturbances associated with dissociative experiences. Consciousness and Cognition July 1, 2024
- The Dreamland: Validation of a Structured Dream Diary. Frontiers in Psychology 2020
- Dreaming and personality: Wake-dream continuity, thought suppression, and the Big Five Inventory. Consciousness and Cognition December 15, 2015
and 3 more in the library