Insight from the consideration of REM dreams, non-REM dreams, and daydreams.

Blagrove, Mark; Edwards, Christopher; Rijn, Elaine van; Reid, Alex; Malinowski, Josie E.; Bennett, Paul; Carr, Michelle; Eichenlaub, Jean-Baptiste; McGee, Shauna; Evans, K.; Ruby, Perrine

doi:10.1037/cns0000167

Cited by 13 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 106 publications

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“…We propose that the sharing of dreams has an empathic effect on the dreamer and on significant others who hear and engage with the telling of the dream. This suggested post-sleep effect of dreams can be contrasted with theories of within-sleep functions, such as that dreams reflect memory processing during sleep (Walker and Van der Helm, 2009; Blagrove et al, 2011a, b; Wamsley and Stickgold, 2011, 2018; Wamsley, 2014; van Rijn et al, 2015; Eichenlaub et al, 2018; Scarpelli et al, 2019), or reflect pre-sleep emotional waking life (Schredl, 2006; Malinowski and Horton, 2014; Blagrove et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 90%

“…Edwards et al (2015) showed that exploration-insight scores are greater for considering dreams than for considering a recent personally significant event, where both sets of reports were discussed and explored using the Ullman procedure. Furthermore, in Blagrove et al (2019), participants rated discussions of dreams significantly higher than discussions of daydreams on exploration-insight, and also rated the statement “I learned more about issues in my waking life” more highly from discussing a dream than from discussing a daydream. These latter results were obtained even though participants did not select the dreams, as these were collected in the sleep laboratory, whereas home dreams can often be selected for sharing on the basis of appearing to be interesting, intriguing, useful or impactful.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

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Testing the Empathy Theory of Dreaming: The Relationships Between Dream Sharing and Trait and State Empathy

et al. 2019

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In general, dreams are a novel but realistic simulation of waking social life, with a mixture of characters, motivations, scenarios, and positive and negative emotions. We propose that the sharing of dreams has an empathic effect on the dreamer and on significant others who hear and engage with the telling of the dream. Study 1 tests three correlations that are predicted by the theory of dream sharing and empathy: that trait empathy will be correlated with frequency of telling dreams to others, with frequency of listening to others’ dreams, and with trait attitude toward dreams (ATD) (for which higher scores indicate positive attitude). 160 participants completed online the Toronto Empathy Questionnaire and the Mannheim Dream Questionnaire. Pearson partial correlations were conducted, with age and sex partialled out. Trait empathy was found to be significantly associated with the frequency of listening to the dreams of others, frequency of telling one’s own dreams to others, and attitude toward dreams. Study 2 tests the effects of discussing dreams on state empathy, using an adapted version of the Shen (2010) state empathy scale, for 27 pairs of dream sharers and discussers. Dream discussion followed the stages of the Ullman (1996) dream appreciation technique. State empathy of the dream discusser toward the dream sharer was found to increase significantly as a result of the dream discussion, with a medium effect size, whereas the dream sharer had a small decrease in empathy toward the discusser. A proposed mechanism for these associations and effects is taken from the robust findings in the literature that engagement with literary fiction can induce empathy toward others. We suggest that the dream acts as a piece of fiction that can be explored by the dreamer together with other people, and can thus induce empathy about the life circumstances of the dreamer. We discuss the speculation that the story-like characteristics of adult human dreams may have been selected for in human evolution, including in sexual selection, as part of the selection for emotional intelligence, empathy, and social bonding.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Testing the Empathy Theory of Dreaming: The Relationships Between Dream Sharing and Trait and State Empathy

et al. 2019

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“…The correspondence task was completed after these discussions. The aim of these discussions was to assess insight and personal realizations through the consideration of the reports (see Blagrove et al, 2016 Though there is considerable evidence for the dream-lag effect (Blagrove et al, 2011a;Blagrove et al, 2011b;Blagrove et al, 2014;Nielsen & Powell, 1989;Nielsen et al, 2004;Powell et al, 1995;van Rijn et al, 2015), there are also studies that find limited evidence (Nielsen & Powell, 1992) or that do not find the effect at all (Henley-Einion & Blagrove, 2014;Schredl, 2006). Despite methodological and sample size differences between previous research into the dream-lag and the present study, it is important to consider the possibility that the current non-replication shows that the dream-lag effect does not exist, and instead that waking life events gradually disappear from dreams across consecutive nights (Botman & Crovitz, 1989;Schredl, 2006).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Two to six days after the dream report collection, participants returned to the laboratory so as to clarify and discuss the content of their daydream and N2 and REM dream reports. Data for this are presented elsewhere (Blagrove et al, 2016), note that for participants with two REM dreams only one of these was clarified and discussed. After the discussions they were given the transcripts of the daydream and dream reports, and their diary records completed in the 10 days before sleeping in the sleep laboratory, so as to identify correspondences between the two sets of records, as detailed in the next section.…”

Section: Instrumental Awakenings and (Day)dream Report Collectionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Daydreams incorporate recent waking life concerns but do not show delayed (‘dream-lag’) incorporations

Rijn

Reid

Edwards

et al. 2018

Consciousness and Cognition

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This study investigates the time course of incorporation of waking life experiences into daydreams. Thirty-one participants kept a diary for 10 days, reporting major daily activities (MDAs), personally significant events (PSEs) and major concerns (MCs). They were then cued for daydream, Rapid Eye Movement (REM) and N2 dream reports in the sleep laboratory. There was a higher incorporation into daydreams of MCs from the previous two days (day-residue effect), but no day-residue effect for MDAs or PSEs, supporting a function for daydreams of processing current concerns. A day-residue effect for PSEs and the delayed incorporation of PSEs from 5 to 7 days before the dream (the dream-lag effect) have previously been found for REM dreams. Delayed incorporation was not found in this study for daydreams. Daydreams might thus differ in function from REM sleep dreams. However, the REM dream-lag effect was not replicated here, possibly due to design differences from previous studies.

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“…Blagrove (2011) proposed that whether dreams and waking life are continuous needs to be augmented by an insight dimension. It was proved that personal insight would increase by examining dream content (Edwards et al, 2015;Blagrove et al, 2019). In fact, there is also a continuity of insight function between wake and dream state.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bizarreness of Lucid and Non-lucid Dream: Effects of Metacognition

Huang

2020

Front. Psychol.

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Dreams are usually characterized by primary consciousness, bizarreness and cognitive deficits, lacking metacognition. However, lucid dreaming (LD) is a type of consciousness state during which the dreamer is aware of the fact that he or she is dreaming, without leaving the sleeping state. Brain research has found that LD shares some common neural mechanisms with metacognition such as self-reflection. With a different metacognition level, the bizarreness of LD would also change. However, the difference in bizarreness between LD and non-LD was seldom explored, and individual differences were often neglected. In the present study, considering LD prevalence in Asia was rarely studied and related results in China and Japan were very different from each other, we first investigated the LD frequency of China in a standardized way. On that basis, we collected dreams of subjects who had relatively higher LD frequency and compared bizarreness density (BD) of LD and non-LD. Moreover, to explore the relationships of metacognition traits and BD, we also measured self-reflection and insight trait by Self-Reflection and Insight Scale. We found that 81.3% of subjects have experienced LD once or more, which is similar to findings in some western countries. Besides, BD was significantly lower in LD than in non-LD. Self-reflection and insight were inversely associated with dream bizarreness. These findings indicate that self-consciousness traits extend from waking to LD and non-LD state. As a particular consciousness state, LD may shed light on the research of consciousness and dream continuity. Future research on dream bizarreness is suggested to take dream types and metacognition differences into consideration.

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Insight from the consideration of REM dreams, non-REM dreams, and daydreams.

Cited by 13 publications

References 106 publications

Testing the Empathy Theory of Dreaming: The Relationships Between Dream Sharing and Trait and State Empathy

Testing the Empathy Theory of Dreaming: The Relationships Between Dream Sharing and Trait and State Empathy

Daydreams incorporate recent waking life concerns but do not show delayed (‘dream-lag’) incorporations

Bizarreness of Lucid and Non-lucid Dream: Effects of Metacognition

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