Presleep Ruminating on Intrusive Thoughts Increased the Possibility of Dreaming of Threatening Events

Abstract

This study investigated whether ruminating on an intrusive thought before sleeping led to an increased likelihood of dreaming of threatening events. One hundred and forty-six participants were randomly assigned to a rumination condition (a rumination on an intrusive thought for 5 min before sleeping; N = 73) and a control condition (think about anything for 5 min before sleeping; N = 73). Participants completed a dream diary upon waking. The result showed that presleep ruminating on an intrusive thought increased the frequency of both threatening dreams and negative emotions in dreams. In addition, dreams with threatening events were more emotional and negative than dreams without threatening events. These results may support the threat simulation theory of dreaming. In addition, these results may give some insight into a mathematical model for the continuity hypothesis of dreaming.

Presleep focusing on positive spontaneous thoughts enhanced the possibility of dreaming of them

“…To our knowledge, most of this kind of evidence was correlational in nature, because there was a difficulty to manipulate dream content directly (for a talk, see Schredl, 2003 ). Yet still some studies showed a causal relationship for this topic (e.g., Nikles et al, 1998 ; Wegner et al, 2004 ; Taylor and Bryant, 2007 ; Kröner-Borowik et al, 2013 ; Malinowski et al, 2019 ; Feng and Wang, 2022 ; Wang et al, 2022 ). These studies can be divided into two kinds.…”

The effect of childhood emotional abuse and neglect on disturbed dreaming frequency: The important role of rumination and perceived social support.

“…In the direction of rumination predicting disturbed dreaming frequency, we found that rumination positively predicted disturbed dreaming frequency. Feng and Wang (2022) found that negative state rumination before sleep also increases the occurrence of threatening dreams at night. Therefore, both state and trait rumination are important factors influencing disturbed dreaming.…”

“…Yang et al, 2019). Feng and Wang (2022) explored whether state rumination over negative events prior to sleep enhances dream threatiness. They invited individuals who did not fall asleep for more than 30 min and who had more than two dreams per week.…”

Dreams share phenomenological similarities with task-unrelated thoughts and relate to variation in trait rumination and COVID-19 concern

“…Although far from illuminating any causal relationships, our findings hint at the relevance of dreams to this topic, as the act of repetitively dwelling on one’s problems and concerns may increase the likelihood that topics of concern will manifest in one’s dreams. Indeed, in one empirical study, individuals assigned to ruminate about an intrusive thought before sleep were more likely to experience threatening and negatively-valenced dreams 97 . Longitudinal analysis of the reciprocal relationship between ruminative thoughts and ruminative dreams would be an interesting direction to unpack in future research.…”