Fear in Dreams Predicts Stronger Affect Reactivity in Wakefulness

Abstract Sleep plays an important role in affective processing and affect regulation during wakefulness. Dreaming—the subjective experiences occurring during sleep—has been suggested to reflect, or even contribute to, waking affect regulation. However, the role of dream affect in waking affect regulation has rarely been studied directly. Here, we investigated how dream affect relates to waking affect reactivity and regulation at the between-person level. Over 7 days, 87 participants (18 - 70 y, M = 27.23, SD = 11.75; 76 females) kept dream journals and rated their dream affect and sleep quality each morning upon awakening. They then completed an affect reactivity and regulation task in the laboratory while their brain activity was measured using electroencephalography. Participants were shown negative and neutral pictures and instructed to either (1) look at the pictures and experience affect elicited by the pictures or (2) downregulate their affective responses. We analyzed subjective ratings of valence and arousal as well as the late positive potential (LPP), a well-validated index of affect reactivity and regulation. Multiple linear regression analyses showed that participants with higher average levels of dream fear and good sleep quality displayed stronger affect reactivity (indexed by larger LPP amplitudes) to negative pictures. No significant relationship emerged between dream affect and subjective ratings of affect reactivity or between dream affect and waking affect regulation. These results support, at the between-person level, continuity between dream affect and objective, neurophysiological affect reactivity in wakefulness but not continuity in subjective affective experiences.