Violence, sex, and dreams: Violent and sexual media content infiltrate our dreams at night.

Abstract

Many people today are immersed in media similar to fish in water. Electronic devices provide virtually unlimited access to media. Although people consume media during their waking hours, the media they consume might also affect their dreams during sleeping hours. The media often contain violence and sex. On the basis of cognitive neoassociation theory, we predicted that violent and sexual media content would prime related thoughts in semantic memory. In this study, 1,287 Turkish participants completed a survey about their media consumption and their dreams the previous night. We measured the frequency of their media consumption and the violent and sexual content of the media they consumed on a regular basis and on the day before the survey. We also measured whether they had a dream the night before they completed the survey and dream content if they dreamed (51.5% dreamed). We measured whether participants had dreams with violent and sexual content. Similar results were obtained for regular media consumption and for media consumption on the day before the survey. For both measures, media consumption was positively related to dreaming frequency. Media content also influenced dream content. Specifically, participants who consumed violent media tended to have violent dreams, and participants who consumed sexual media tended to have sexual dreams. These results are consistent with cognitive neoassociation theory and extend the theory by showing that it also applies to sleeping hours as well as waking hours. The results also have practical implications. Media can influence our thoughts, even when we are asleep.

The role of dreams of ads in purchase intention.

“…This is a particularly relevant result, as extant literature regarding the impact of experimental presleep film stimuli on dream content tends to report low effect scores (Hobson, Pace-Schott, & Stickgold, 2000). Still, and in line with this article, a recent study by Van den Bulck, Çetin, Terzi, and Bushman (2016) shows a clear effect of media content on dream content.…”

Dance the Night Away: How Automatic TikTok Use Creates Pre-Sleep Cognitive Arousal and Daytime Fatigue

“…We proposed pre-sleep cognitive arousal as an additional explanation and tested its mediating effect between automatic TikTok use and daytime fatigue. Such a mediating effect was indeed observed, both supportive of hypothesis H 2 and in line with a prior study suggesting that the disturbance caused by media content is still at play in the absence of sensory instigation (Van den Bulck et al, 2016): Specifically, the chronic effect of media exposure may infiltrate the cognitive system without conscious control. Automatic TikTok use may simply raise the odds of people coming across arousing content, which is relatively popular on the platform (BBC, 2020), and may lead to more overall time spent on TikTok, thereby aggravating daytime fatigue.…”

“…More specifically, researchers argue that arousal created by media content consumed before falling asleep exerts an influence on viewers' cognitions before and even while sleeping (Van den Bulck et al, 2016). Two more studies focusing on TV viewing found that pre-sleep cognitive arousal explains why viewers feel increased fatigue during the day, and that TV viewing is responsible for daytime dysfunction (Exelmans & Van den Bulck, 2017a;.…”

Animals in Dreams of Children, Adolescents, and Adults: The UK Library Study

“…The quite frequent occurrences of fantasy/prehistoric animals in the dreams of children and adolescents indicate that media might have an effect on dreams about animals. Whereas the effect of media on dreams have been demonstrated (Moverley et al., 2018; Stephan et al., 2012; Van den Bulck, 2004; Van den Bulck et al., 2016), systematic studies as to whether media animals show up in dreams have not yet been carried out.…”