Measuring Manifest Dream Content

Abstract

Manifest dream content refers to the descriptive nature of people’s dreams. The present investigation was concerned with the relationship between manifest dream content and gender, personality, and stress. For this purpose, an assessment instrument was developed to measure a variety of different types of manifest dream content, the Manifest Dream Scale (MDS). Factor analysis indicated that the items on the Manifest Dream Scale clustered into five separate groups: (a) positive social activity, (b) undesirable negative experience, (c) death, injury, and natural events, (d) entertainment and recreation, and (e) mundane activities. Gender was found to be related to some but not all of the manifest dream categories. A more consistent pattern of relationships was found between manifest dream content and (a) instrumental and expressive personality attributes, and (b) gender role tendencies. In addition, a final set of results indicated that a recent history of stressful life experiences produced an impact on the manifest content of women’s and men’s dreams.