Peace of mind and anxiety in the waking state are related to the affective content of dreams

Abstract

Waking mental well-being is assumed to be tightly linked to sleep and the affective content of dreams. However, empirical research is scant and has mostly focused on ill-being by studying the dreams of people with psychopathology. We explored the relationship between waking well-being and dream affect by measuring not only symptoms of ill-being but also different types and components of well-being. Importantly, this is the first time peace of mind was investigated as a distinct aspect of well-being in a Western sample and in relation to dream content. Healthy participants completed a well-being questionnaire, followed by a three-week daily dream diary and ratings of dream affect. Multilevel analyses showed that peace of mind was related to positive dream affect, whereas symptoms of anxiety were related to negative dream affect. Moreover, waking measures were better related to affect expressed in dream reports rather than participants’ self-ratings of dream affect. We propose that whereas anxiety may reflect affect dysregulation in waking and dreaming, peace of mind reflects enhanced affect regulation in both states of consciousness. Therefore, dream reports may possibly serve as markers of mental health. Finally, our study shows that peace of mind complements existing conceptualizations and measures of well-being.

Contributors

Pilleriin Sikka:

ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1926-6138

[e-mail]

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Sci Rep

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Sci Rep

Title: Scientific Reports

Publisher: Nature Publishing Group UK (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 2045-2322

Publication date (Electronic): 24 August 2018

Publication date PMC-release: 24 August 2018

Publication date Collection: 2018

Volume: 8

Affiliations

[1 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2097 1371, GRID grid.1374.1, Department of Psychology and Speech-Language Pathology, Turku Brain and Mind Center, , University of Turku, ; Turku, Finland

[2 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2254 0954, GRID grid.412798.1, Department of Cognitive Neuroscience and Philosophy, School of Bioscience, , University of Skövde, ; Skövde, Sweden

[3 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2097 1371, GRID grid.1374.1, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, , University of Turku, ; Turku, Finland

[4 ]ISNI 0000000108389418, GRID grid.5373.2, Department of Computer Science, , Aalto University, ; Helsinki, Finland

Article

Publisher ID: 30721

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-30721-1

PMC ID: 6109051

PubMed ID: 30143673

Copyright statement: © The Author(s) 2018

License:

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Categories

Subject: Article

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