The effects of dream rebound: evidence for emotion‐processing theories of dreaming

Abstract

Suppressing thoughts often leads to a “rebound” effect, both in waking cognition (thoughts) and in sleep cognition (dreams). Rebound may be influenced by the valence of the suppressed thought, but there is currently no research on the effects of valence on dream rebound. Further, the effects of dream rebound on subsequent emotional response to a suppressed thought have not been studied before. The present experiment aimed to investigate whether emotional valence of a suppressed thought affects dream rebound, and whether dream rebound subsequently influences subjective emotional response to the suppressed thought. Participants (N = 77) were randomly assigned to a pleasant or unpleasant thought suppression condition, suppressed their target thought for 5 min pre‐sleep every evening, reported the extent to which they successfully suppressed the thought, and reported their dreams every morning for 7 days. It was found that unpleasant thoughts were more prone to dream rebound than pleasant thoughts. There was no effect of valence on the success or failure of suppression during wakefulness. Dream rebound and successful suppression were each found to have beneficial effects for subjective emotional response to both pleasant and unpleasant thoughts. The results may lend support for an emotion‐processing theory of dream function.

A presleep consideration of an intrusive thought enhances the possibility of dreaming of it.

“…This experiment explored whether a presleep-focused intrusive thought prompted people to report dreaming about that thought. Here, our external rating (rather than self-rating) found that participants in the suppression condition dreamed more of content that was related to their intrusive thoughts than participants in the control condition, in line with previous findings (Bryant et al, 2011; Malinowski et al, 2019; Taylor & Bryant, 2007). In addition, we found that participants in the expression condition dreamed more of content that was related to their intrusive thoughts than participants in the control condition.…”

“…This kind of rating may minimize potential errors caused by situations stated earlier, and thus it was more suitable for a comparison between different conditions. Our rating result for the dream rebound effect may support our idea because, to our knowledge, most of the recent studies concerning the dream rebound effect adopted the external method to show their results (Bryant et al, 2011; Malinowski et al, 2019; Taylor & Bryant, 2007).…”

“…The dream rebound effect refers to an increased possibility for a suppressed thought appearing in dreams (Bryant et al, 2011; Kröner-Borowik et al, 2013; Malinowski et al, 2019; Schmidt & Gendolla, 2008; Taylor & Bryant, 2007; Wegner et al, 2004). This effect has been explained by the ironic control theory (Wegner, 1994), which suggests two interactive processes during a thought suppression process: an operating process that draws one’s attention to desired thoughts except for the suppressed thought and a monitoring process that searches for the suppressed thought.…”

Dreaming and Sleep-Related Metacognitions in Patients with Sleep Disorders

“…Within the field of dream research, several studies [ 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 ] have examined the so-called “dream rebound effect”: persons who are instructed to suppress specific thoughts prior to sleep onset are more likely to dream about it. Malinowski, Carr, Edwards, Ingarfill, and Pinto [ 15 ] were able to demonstrate that thought suppression of negatively toned thoughts showed an even stronger dream rebound effect, i.e., it occurred more often in dreams, than for the suppression of positive thoughts.…”

Focus on sleep‐related breathing disorders

“…Malinowski, Carr, Edwards, Ingarfill, and Pinto () present data from the field of dreaming. They follow the exciting theoretic assumption that especially dreaming during REM sleep may lead to a rebound of suppressed thoughts in dream content.…”