Correlates of Dream Recall: Implications for Confabulation
Imagination, Cognition and Personality October 1, 2014 DOI: 10.2190/ic.34.2.e (opens in new tab)
Summary
AI-generated from the abstractPeople who often remember their dreams tend to be more open, have thinner psychological boundaries, and are prone to fantasy, according to two experiments. In the first experiment with 221 participants, these personality traits correlated with dream recall as measured by a validated questionnaire. A second experiment with 45 participants showed that the tendency to confabulate—confusing imagination with reality and creating false memories—was linked to awareness of dreaming, but not to other memory scores. This suggests that dream recall reflects a constructive, autobiographical memory process prone to error, rather than accurate memory, and warns that freely recalled dreams should be interpreted with caution.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Two-experiment correlational study Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 266 |
| Population | Participants recruited online (Experiment 1) and in-person (Experiment 2) |
| Key finding | The personality profile associated with dream recall (openness, thin boundaries, fantasy-proneness) is linked to confabulation, not to accurate autobiographical memory, suggesting dream recall reflects constructive memory processes. |
Abstract
This investigation aimed to characterize the personality profile of dream-recallers using a psychometrically-validated measure of dream remembering (the MED-Q) (Horton & Conway, 2009), and considered these relationships in terms of confabulation: the tendency to confuse reality with imaginings and thus create false memories. In Experiment 1, 221 participants completed the MED-Q and a battery of personality measures online. The MED-Q significantly correlated with personality dimensions such as openness, thin boundaries, and fantasy-proneness, reinforcing previous findings. Experiment 2 involved participants ( N = 45) recalling a previously-read story, providing measures of true recall and confabulation. A significant relationship was found between the MED-Q (“Awareness of dreaming” factor) and confabulation, but not with other memory scores. Thus, the personality profile described in Experiment 1 gives rise to a tendency to confabulate, reflect upon or rehearse personal memories, as opposed to improving the recall of autobiographical memories, which in turn may lead to an increased awareness of dreaming (Experiment 2). This not only reinforces the overlap between dreaming and constructive autobiographical memory processes, but also acts as a warning to interpret freely recalled dreams with substantial caution.