Negative dream affect is associated with next-day affect level, but not with affect reactivity or affect regulation

Abstract

There is increasing evidence that sleep plays an important role in affective processing. However, it is unclear whether dreaming—the subjective experiences we have during sleep—also serves an affect regulation function. Here, we investigated the within-person relationship between negative affect experienced in dreams and next-day waking affect level, affect reactivity, and affect regulation. For 5 days, 40 participants reported their dreams and rated their dream affect and post-sleep waking affect level upon morning awakening. Thereafter, they performed an affect reactivity and regulation task which involved viewing neutral and negative pictures with the instruction either to simply view the pictures or to down-regulate the affect evoked by these pictures. Multilevel regression analyses showed that the more negative affect people experienced in their dreams at night, the more negative affect and the less positive affect they reported the next morning. However, negative dream affect was associated neither with affect reactivity to the pictures nor with the ability to down-regulate negative affect in response to these pictures. In fact, Bayesian analyses favored the null hypotheses. These findings fail to provide support for the affect regulation function of dreaming and, instead, speak for affective continuity between dreaming and post-sleep wakefulness.

Диагностические Возможности Анализа Сновидений: Теоретические Предпосылки И Методические Подходы

“…Психическая активность в быстром сне от психической активности в других состояниях (например, в медленноволновом сне и бодрствовании) отличается сильной эмоциональной окрашенностью и чрезвычайной активностью головного мозга, как и при переживании сильного эмоционального стресса (Ковальзон, 2021). Исследования с помощью методов нейровизуализации показали, что процессы, регулирующие сновидения и эмоциональную значимость, имеют те же нейронные субстраты, которые контролируют эмоции во время бодрствования (Scarpelli et al, 2019;Sikka et al, 2022;Barbeau, Turpin, Lafrenière, Campbell & De Koninck, 2022). Так, во сне переживаются чувства радости, удивления, гнева, страха и тревоги.…”

Nocturnal exposure to a preferred ambient scent does not affect dream emotionality or post-sleep core affect valence in young adults

“…They may distort sleep architecture 9 and hence impair sleep quality 10 , but also many other aspects of both sleeping and waking life 11 , including well-being 12 . The link between mental sleep experiences and functioning in waking life may nevertheless generalize to all dreams 13 – 15 .…”

“…Building on the literature on olfactory associative learning and odor primes, the main objectives of the present study were to test whether (1) dream pleasantness, (2) dream emotional charge and magnitude of (3) positive and (4) negative emotions present in dreams differ upon extended, several hour-long exposure to a subjectively salient pleasant ambient odor compared to a time spent in the same room without odorization. Furthermore, assuming continuity between dreaming and waking life [e.g., 14 , 15 ], we also tested whether (5) the valence dimension of a person’s post-sleep affect (e.g., feeling happy, optimistic, and relaxed rather than unhappy, pessimistic, and tense) differs between the two conditions. We hypothesized that dreams would be experienced as more emotionally charged, contain a greater degree of positive and a lesser degree of negative emotions, and that the individual’s post-sleep core affect would be more positively valenced upon exposure compared to the odorless condition.…”