Correlation
between personality characteristics, well-being, attitude to life
and type of dreams experienced
Sue
Gilchrist is undertaking PhD
research at the University of Tasmania, Australia under the
supervision of Dr John Davidson. At the end of November she
completed collection of data for her first study exploring the
correlation between personality characteristics, well-being,
attitude to life and type of dreams experienced.
The aim of the study was to
discover whether personality characteristics and daytime emotions
are related to dream emotions. The participants were 123 people
(94 female, 29 male) from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds,
ranging in age from 17 years to 82 years. The hypothesis was that
people who have significant positive emotional trait and state
ratings in waking life would experience more positive dreams. Two
data collection techniques were employed: a questionnaire and
diaries. The questionnaire included Hartmann’s Boundary
Questionnaire, IPIP Emotional Stability Scale, Life Orientation
Test -Revised (LOT-R), Staats Hope Scale, Adult Dispositional Hope
Scale, Satisfaction with Life Scale and the Positive and Negative
Affect Schedule (PANAS) to assess personality and attitude
characteristics. Participants’ self-ratings of the emotions they
experienced were recorded in daily waking logs and home dream
diaries over a three-week period. Emotions rated were: anger,
apprehension, sadness, confusion, joy, contentment, love, and
excitement. Averages of the four positive and the four negative
emotions were determined. Correlations between average intensity
of waking and dream emotions over the three week period were .68
for averages of positive emotions and also .68 for averages of
negative emotions. For duration the corresponding correlations
were .65 for positive emotions and .55 for negative emotions. For
individual emotions correlations between waking and dreaming
ranged from .44 to .69 for intensity and .26 to .74 for duration.
There were also low but significant correlations between some
personality characteristics and participants’ tendency to
experience positive or negative emotions in dreams.
