Obsessions at Night: Dream Experiences, Emotional Attributes, and Personality Traits as Indicators of Sleep Problems

This study investigated the extent to which negative emotions, personality traits, and obsessive-compulsive distress modulate the relationship between sleep problems and dream experiences. The sample consisted of 610 upper secondary school students, whose subjective intensity of dream experiences, thematic dream content, obsessivecompulsive distress, personality traits, defensiveness, emotional qualities, and sleep disturbances were assessed using the Dream Intensity Scale, Dream Motif Scale, Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory-Revised, NEO Five-Factor Inventory, Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, Beck Depression Inventory-II, Beck Anxiety Inventory, State-Trait Anger Expression Iventory-2, and Sleep Habits Questionnaire. The overall findings indicate that waking-life emotionality, personality traits, obsessive-compulsive distress, and other important factors for sleep quality – such as the ability to unwind one’s mind when retiring to sleep – moderate but do not mediate the relationship between disrupted sleep and dreaming. It seems, therefore, that dream experiences can serve as unique indicators of sleep problems.