Relationships between Dream and Previous Wake Emotions Assessed through the Italian Modified Differential Emotions Scale

Abstract

Despite the increasing interest in sleep and dream-related processes of emotion regulation, their reflection into wake and dream emotional experience remains unclear. Here, we aimed to assess dream emotions and their relationships with wake emotions through the modified Differential Emotions Scale (Fredrickson, 2003), which includes a broad array of both positive and negative emotions. The scale has been first validated on 212 healthy Italian participants, in two versions: a WAKE-2wks form, assessing the frequency of 22 emotions over the past 2 weeks, and a WAKE-24hr form, assessing their intensity over the past 24 h. Fifty volunteers from the wider sample completed the WAKE-24hr mDES for several days until a dream was recalled, and dream emotions were self-reported using the same scale. A bifactorial structure was confirmed for both mDES forms, which also showed good validity and reliability. Though Positive and Negative Affect (average intensity of positive and negative items, PA, and NA, respectively) were balanced in dreams, specific negative emotions prevailed; rmANOVA showed a different pattern (prevalence of PA and positive emotions) in wake (both WAKE-2wks and WAKE-24hr), with a decrease of PA and an increase of NA in the dream compared to previous wake. No significant regression model emerged between waking and dream affect, and exploratory analyses revealed a stable proportion of PA and NA (with prevailing PA) over the 3 days preceding the dream. Our findings highlight a discontinuity between wake and dream affect and suggest that positive and negative emotions experienced during wake may undertake distinct sleep-related regulation pathways.

The Effects of Sleep Quality on Dream and Waking Emotions

“…Indeed, several hypotheses on the presentation of waking and dream emotions in good and poor sleepers may be put forward. For instance, the profile of differences between daytime and dream emotionality observed in our previous study [ 15 ] could emerge in poor sleepers as well, indicating the presence of a similar pathway of affective processing notwithstanding the possible dysfunctionality of emotion regulation processes in poor sleepers observed in previous literature (e.g., [ 21 , 33 ]). Alternatively, poor sleepers could display an inverse pattern of emotionality in wakefulness and dreaming relative to good sleepers, with negative tone predominant in wakefulness and a positive rebound in sleep.…”

“…As also suggested in the discussion of those findings [ 15 ], another intriguing hypothesis is that the relationships between waking and dream emotions (plausibly reflecting affective regulation processes) may be modulated by sleep quality. In fact, in the last couple of decades, a vast amount of research has focused on the effects of sleep disruption on several aspects of affective processing.…”

“…The whole selected sample ( N = 212) participated in a larger study [ 15 ], which included a validation of the Italian version of the mDES [ 16 , 17 ]. Thus, two forms of the questionnaire (WAKE-24 h and WAKE-2 weeks, assessing the frequency of specific emotions over the past 2 weeks and their intensity in the past 24 h, respectively) were administered to participants along with the Mannheim Dream Questionnaire (MADRE [ 46 ]) to collect data on dream recall frequency and several variables related to dreams, and the PSQI [ 35 ], in its Italian version [ 47 ], to assess habitual subjective sleep quality.…”

“…While our previous study [ 15 ] focused on differences between waking and dream emotions in the general sample, this study analyses the same dataset with regard to sleep quality, i.e., by dividing the final sample ( N = 50) into a group of ‘Good Sleepers’ and a group of ‘Poor Sleepers’ (GS and PS, respectively) based on the PSQI cut-off score (scores ≥ 5 indicate poor sleep quality [ 35 ]).…”

“…However, a clear understanding of the relationship between waking and dream emotions and their expression in subjective daytime consciousness and sleep mentation is still lacking. A recent study by our group [ 15 ] has addressed this issue in a sample of healthy adults: emotions of the last recalled dream, as well as those of the previous day and previous two weeks, were collected (through the modified Differential Emotions Scale, mDES [ 16 , 17 ]) and compared. Our findings mainly highlighted a discontinuity between waking and dream affect, with positive emotionality prevailing during the past two weeks as well as the day before the dream and reduced in the dream, while negative emotionality of the dream was similar to that of the preceding two weeks but significantly increased relative to the previous day.…”