Are Negative Attitudes Toward Dreams Just the Inverse of Positive Attitudes Toward Dreams? An Empirical Investigation

Abstract

As dreaming is a universal phenomenon, it seems natural that everyone has a more or less explicitly defined attitude toward dreams. Recent studies indicate that positive and negative attitude toward dream scales—even given there is considerable overlap—might not be related to the same variables. The findings of the present online survey ( N = 2,056) using 22 attitude items indicated that positive and negative attitudes can be differentiated through confirmatory factor analysis and that variables like age, education, and frequent dream recall are differentially associated with positive and negative attitudes toward dreams. It would be very interesting to expand this study to investigate whether other variables, personality dimensions, general skepticism and so on, are associated with positive and negative attitudes toward dreams in different ways.

Attitude Towards Dreams: Associated Factors

“…Similar to previous studies (Bulkeley & Schredl, 2019; Schredl, 2013; Schredl et al, 2020), the findings indicated the variability of the attitude towards dreams dimension: Whereas 30% to 50% of this sample indicated a positive attitude towards dreams, about 20% to 35% were not that positive about dreams (see Table 2). As mentioned above, this ratio might be slightly biased, as one would expect somewhat lower percentages of persons with positive attitudes towards dream in representative sample as their average dream recall frequency in the general population is lower.…”

“…This might be explained by a gender specific dream socialization as girls talk more about dreams with peers than boys (Schredl et al, 2015). Similar, these large-scaled studies (Bulkeley & Schredl, 2019; Schredl, 2013, 2020; Schredl et al, 2014b) showed a small but significant decrease of positive attitudes towards dreams with age. As the attitude towards dreams score was quite stable over a 5-year period (Schredl et al, 2019), one might speculate that the age differences might be explained by cohort effects, that is, the attitude towards dreams differs between the generations.…”

“…This association seems very plausible as persons with high scores in this personality dimension are interested in a lot of things (Shiraev, 2017), one of them might be dreams. Compared to the association between openness to experience and attitude towards dreams, the correlation between neuroticism and attitude towards dreams was smaller but significant in most studies (Aumann et al, 2012; Schredl, 2004b, 2020; Schredl & Göritz, 2017) with one study (Hill et al, 1997) reporting no association. One possible explanation for this finding might be that persons with high neuroticism scores might try to use their dreams as mean to cope with their problems – the beneficial effect of working with dreams have been empirically demonstrated (Edwards et al, 2015; Hill & Goates, 2004).…”

“…Large-scaled studies in population-based samples (Bulkeley & Schredl, 2019; Schredl, 2013, 2020; Schredl et al, 2014b) showed a distinct gender difference with women reporting a more positive attitude towards dreams than men do. This might be explained by a gender specific dream socialization as girls talk more about dreams with peers than boys (Schredl et al, 2015).…”

“…Regarding personality factors, the empirical evidence regarding the Big Five personality factor of openness to experience is unequivocal; persons with high openness scores tend to report a more positive attitude towards dreams – even after controlling for dream recall frequency in some studies (Aumann et al, 2012; Hill et al, 1997; Schredl, 2004b, 2020; Schredl & Göritz, 2017). This association seems very plausible as persons with high scores in this personality dimension are interested in a lot of things (Shiraev, 2017), one of them might be dreams.…”