Effect of personality and presleep mood on dream recall.

Abstract

The present investigation confirms and extends previously reported evidence of a predictable association between presleep mood and dream recall. Infrequent (but not frequent) dream recallers were more likely to recall dreams when presleep self-confidence was lowest than when it was highest for an individual subject. This result directly contradicts the repression hypothesis of dream recall. In addition, for habitually low self-confident and sensitizer subjects only, the lowest self-confidence rating during a five-day recording period was associated with unpleasant dream affect; the highest self-confidence rating was associated with pleasant dream affect. These findings support the hypothesis that the relationship between presleep mood and dream affect is modified by enduring subject characteristics that reflect coping effectiveness. The purpose of the present study was to obtain additional evidence that dream reporting and dream affect can more effectively be predicted from both situational (state) and dispositional (trait) factors than from either factor alone. The following results were obtained in a previous study of female subjects (Cohen, 1974a): For infrequent (but not frequent) dream recallers, home dream recall was more likely to occur when presleep selfconfidence was lowest compared to when selfconfidence was highest. The finding supported the hypothesis that the effect was due to an increase in the salience (vividness, emotionality) of dreams which for infrequent recallers is normally low (Cohen & MacNeilage, in