Dream Content, Dream Recurrence and Well-Being: A Replication with a Younger Sample
Antonio Zadra, Shannon A. O'Brien, Don C Donderi
Imagination, Cognition and Personality June 1, 1998 DOI: 10.2190/llxl-d4db-9cp5-brgt (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Observational cohort Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 52 |
| Population | Recurrent, past-recurrent, and nonrecurrent dreamers aged 18 to 21 |
| Duration | 14-day sample of remembered dreams |
| Topics | Dreaming |
| Key findings | Recurrent dreamers scored lower on psychological well-being and reported more negative dream content than past-recurrent and nonrecurrent dreamers. |
Abstract
A multivariate comparison was made among fifty-two recurrent, past-recurrent, and nonrecurrent dreamers aged eighteen to twenty-one. The participants completed measures of well-being and collected a fourteen-day sample of their own remembered dreams. Multivariate analysis showed that recurrent dreamers scored low on psychological well-being and reported more negative dream content. As was true in an earlier study, a single psychometric dimension, which we call psychological well-being, discriminated between the recurrent dream group and the other two groups over the entire set of well-being and dream content variables. As was true in two previous studies, dream archetypality was negatively correlated with a measure of neuroticism. We conclude that in both late teenagers and older adults, recurrent dreams occur in times of stress, are accompanied by negative dream content, and are associated with a deficit in psychological well-being.
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 |
| The prevalence of nightmares and their independence from anxiety. Undergraduates | 1990 | Observational study using daily dream logs | n = 220 |
Citations in the library
Cited by 8
- Dream content and psychological well-being: A longitudinal study of the continuity hypothesis Journal of Clinical Psychology 2005
- An analysis of laypeople’s beliefs regarding the origins of their worst nightmare Papyrus : Institutional Repository (Université de Montréal) 2015
- Frontal Brain Activity and Subjective Arousal During Emotional Picture Viewing in Nightmare Sufferers. Frontiers in Neuroscience September 30, 2020
- Arousal in Nocturnal Consciousness: How Dream- and Sleep-Experiences May Inform Us of Poor Sleep Quality, Stress, and Psychopathology. Frontiers in Psychology May 10, 2017
- The content of recurrent dreams in young adolescents. Consciousness and Cognition December 1, 2015
and 3 more in the library