Abstract
Affective experiences occur across the wake-sleep cycle—from active wakefulness to resting wakefulness (i.e., mind-wandering) to sleep (i.e., dreaming). Yet, we know little about the dynamics of affect across these states. We compared the affective ratings of waking, mind-wandering, and dream episodes. Results showed that mind-wandering was more positively valenced than dreaming, and that both mind-wandering and dreaming were more negatively valenced than active wakefulness. We also compared participants’ self-ratings of affect with external ratings of affect (i.e., analysis of affect in verbal reports). With self-ratings all episodes were predominated by positive affect. However, the affective valence of reports changed from positively valenced waking reports to affectively balanced mind-wandering reports to negatively valenced dream reports. These findings show that (1) the positivity bias characteristic to waking experiences decreases across the wake-sleep continuum, and (2) conclusions regarding affective experiences depend on whether self-ratings or verbal reports describing these experiences are analysed.
Highlights
We spend a large proportion of our lives in states of consciousness where we outwardly seem to be doing nothing, yet inwardly experience rich mental content
The ratings of affect in waking, mind-wandering, and dreaming episodes refer to SR of affect, whereas the ratings of affect in waking, mind-wandering, and dream reports refer to external ratings (ER) of affect
To address the second aim, SR and ER of affect were compared across the three different conditions—active wakefulness, mind-wandering, and dreaming
Summary
We spend a large proportion of our lives in states of consciousness where we outwardly seem to be doing nothing, yet inwardly experience rich mental content Such resting state subjective experiences, involving a stream of thoughts, feelings, and imagery, are largely independent of the external environment and occur across the wake-sleep cycle—from daytime mind-wandering (or day dreaming) to night-time dreaming (Fox, Nijeboer, Solomonova, Domhoff, & Christoff, 2013; Windt, 2021). These internally generated subjective experiences arguably reflect the processing of past memories and the simulation of possible future events (Fox et al, 2013; Revonsuo, Tuominen, & Valli, 2016; Wamsley, 2013).
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