A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal

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




AuthorsSikka Pilleriin, Engelbrektsson Hilda, Zhang Jinxiao, Gross James J.

PublisherFRONTIERS MEDIA SA

Publication year2022

JournalFrontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience

Journal name in sourceFRONTIERS IN BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE

Journal acronymFRONT BEHAV NEUROSCI

Article number 981289

Volume16

Number of pages11

ISSN1662-5153

eISSN1662-5153

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2022.981289

Web address https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2022.981289/full

Self-archived copy’s web addresshttps://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/177147843


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.


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Last updated on 2024-26-11 at 11:15