Emotion Makes Daydreams More Dreamlike, More Symbolic

Abstract

Two experiments investigating the effect of emotion on daydreaming were conducted. In Experiment 1, 44 subjects described a recent daydream and a memorable daydream, a laboratory-generated daydream without concurrent emotion and a laboratory-generated daydream with intensified emotion, plus a recent dream and a memorable dream. Two judges independently rated the dreamlikeness of each description on a blind basis. The daydreams generated during intensified emotion were judged to be significantly more dreamlike than all the other daydreams averaged together. The dreamlikeness scores for the daydreams generated during intensified emotion were almost identical to the drearnlikeness scores for the most recent dreams. In Experiment 2, 62 subjects described a topic-specific dream from memory, a topic-specific daydream from memory, a topic-specific daydream generated without concurrent emotion, a topic-specific daydream generated during intensified emotion, a topic-specific daydream generated after emotion-related thinking, a topic-specific daydream generated under hypnosis, and a topic-specific daydream generated during hypnotically intensified emotion. Two judges independently rated each description on a bizarreness scale and a symbolicvalue scale (ranging from “definitely only one level of meaning” to “definitely more than one level of meaning”). The topic-specific daydreams generated during intensified emotion, averaged across wakeful and hypnotic conditions, were judged to be as symbolic as the topic-specific dreams, and more symbolic than the other daydreams averaged together. This suggests that, when daydreams occur in the presence of an emotion, they picture or contextualize the emotion and appear more dreamlike, more symbolic.