Appropriateness of dream feelings to dreamed situations

Abstract

Affect appropriateness was determined for representatively sampled (REM) dream reports. Seventeen young adults were studied for two nights each. The following data were collected: dream reports; accounts of feelings experienced while dreaming; judgements of feelings appropriate to the dreamed situations had they occurred in wakefulness; and ratings of the correspondence of dream and waking-appropriate feelings. Outside judges given access to both the dream and its feelings rated correspondence in the same manner. Other judges were given access only to dream events and attempted to predict the dreamer's feelings. Where the dream had feelings and the dream situation was judged to require them, these feelings were judged both by the dreamer and the outside judges to be generally similar. The major feeling anomaly was affectless dreaming of situations requiring affect. Dream feelings were relatively difficult to predict, but not more so than waking ones.