A Spillover Model of Dreams and Work Behavior

Abstract

Sleep and employee behavior are linked. While the dominant explanations for this link involve physiology and cognitive resources, we offer a different perspective. We suggest that dreams, or psychological experiences during sleep, spill over to affect employee behavior. This spillover effect, we argue, results from the interplay between dreaming, meaning creation, and emotion. Taking a morning-of perspective, we theorize that recalling and ascribing meaning to dream experiences elicits awe—an epistemic emotion produced by appraisals of vastness and a need for cognitive accommodation. In turn, because awe reduces individuals’ focus on themselves and their concerns, we argue that experiencing awe upon awakening increases employee resilience, and ultimately goal progress, throughout the workday. However, because awe entails a felt need to expand one’s existing ways of knowing, employees may vary in their receptivity to awe. We therefore argue that the link between awe and resilience hinges on trait epistemic curiosity, or employees’ inherent desire to seek and acquire new knowledge. Across three studies—including a morning-of field study, a single-day morning-afternoon study, and a preregistered two-week experience sampling study—we find that ascribing positive meaning to dreams elicits awe, which in turn promotes resilience, and ultimately goal progress, throughout the workday.