No abstract

Twenty-four college and 37 elderly women kept diaries for six weeks, at the end of which they voluntarily submitted them for analysis. The college women selected significantly more emotions for their dreams than did the elderly women. Enjoyment-joy accounted for a significantly higher proportion of emotions in dreams of elderly than in those of college women; but anger-rage and fear-terror occurred significantly less often in dreams of the elderly. The results were interpreted as providing support for the continuity hypothesis which states that dream content is a reflection of one's daily life.

No abstract

Dream diaries, narrative descriptions of five dreams and the selection from an emotion checklist of the two strongest emotions in each dream, were turned in during a 5-wk. period by 13 male and 18 female undergraduates. No significant differences were found in the emotional content of dreams of male and female undergraduates. A chi squared analysis of the combined data showed that the emotions of interest, fear, surprise, enjoyment, and distress were the most prominent ones while anger, shame, disgust, and contempt were the least prominent. The results generated by the dream diary—emotion checklist methodology were compared to and contrasted with those of other studies of dream emotions.