RELATIONSHIPS AMONG HUMOR APPRECIATION, NIGHTMARE DISTURBANCE, AND OTHER DREAM PHENOMENA

Abstract

Some have argued that a sense of humor helps one to maintain self-control over stressful experiences (2). Also, Hartmann (1) has suggested that nightmare disturbance may be related to a feeling of personal helplessness. It was hypothesized that those participants scoring higher on a measure of humor appreciation would show less nightmare disturbance. Also, the relation of humor to other dream phenomena was explored. Forty-nine (27 women, 22 men) first-year students in psychology were given a humor appreciation inventory (3) and a sleep and dream experiences questionnaire which included items pertaining to nightmare frequency and distress, dream control, and dream recall. Analysis indicated that nightmare s r = .29, p < .05, one-tailed) and approached significance for sick (M = 9.55, SD = 2.58; r = .24, p<. 10) and hostile humor (M = 11.55, SD = 3.07; r = .21, p<.10). Exploratory analyses (two-tailed) showed that dream recall (M = 6.20, SD = 4.45) was inversely correlated with nonsense humor (M= 11.67, SD = 3.50; r= -.33, p i .05) and approached significance for social satire (M = 13.41, SD = 3.58; r = .29, p < . lo), and total humor (M = 91.18, SD = 17.29; r = -.26, p < . lo). Dream control (M = 7.94, SD = 1.80) correlated significantly with hostile humor (r= .40, p<.01) and was marginally related to philosophy (M = 11.80, SD = 4.06; r= .26, p< .lo), demeaning to men (r = .29, p < . lo), and total humor (r = .27. D < . lo). . . The present study suggests that humor appreciation does not directly reduce the incidence of nightmare disturbance. In fact, it seems to be positively related to nightmare distress. One possibility that could be explored is that humor may mediate the relation between nightmare disturbance and emotional outcome. Interestingly, humor was also related to both dream control and recall. While interoretation of these results at this time remains saeculative. it is interesting to note that humor and dream control covary positively. Such relationships may have implications for the study of lucid dreaming and problem solving in dreams.