Associations Between Both Adaptive and Maladaptive Personality Constructs and Emotional Load and Content of Adult Dreams

Personality traits, both adaptive and maladaptive, are linked to the emotional tone and content of dreams. In a study of 704 Iranian adults, two broad personality spectrums—adaptive and maladaptive—emerged from the data. Both spectrums related similarly to positive and negative dream emotions, but negative dream emotions were more strongly predicted by maladaptive traits (explaining 13% of the variance versus 7% for adaptive traits). Negative dream emotions were tied to low agreeableness and high negative affectivity, while positive dream emotions were tied to high agreeableness and low detachment. Dreamers reporting happy content had higher adaptive and lower maladaptive traits compared to those with distressing dreams.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Background: It seems that personality and dreams are relatively stable interwoven constructs that show many shared characteristics across cultures. The present study aimed to predict the emotional load and content of dreams using both original constructs and two extracted spectrum factors of adaptive and maladaptive personalities. Methods: The cross-sectional study data was collected from 704 Iranian adults using the brief version of the Personality Inventory for DSM-5, the brief version of the Big Five Inventory, Schredl’s Dream Emotions Manual, and the Content Analysis of Dreams Manual. Pearson correlations, hierarchical regressions, exploratory factor analysis, and analysis of variance were used to analyse the data. Results: Factor analysis revealed two factors for the adaptive and maladaptive spectrums of personality. Adaptive and maladaptive constructs of personality are almost equally related to both the negative and positive loads of dreams, while the negative load of dreams is more strongly predicted by the maladaptive spectrum factor ( R 2 : 13% vs. 7%, ∆ R 2 : 8% vs. 2%). Negative load is characterized by low agreeableness and high negative affectivity, while positive load is characterized by high agreeableness and low detachment. Compared to most negative dream content such as distress, dreamers with happy content reported higher adaptive traits and lower maladaptive traits. Conclusions: The emotional load and content of dreams are significantly related to both specific constructs and spectrum factors of adaptive and maladaptive personalities. Psychologists can refer to personality profiles when analysing the emotional load and content of dreams of adults.