Summary: A new study investigated the connection between COVID-19-related anxieties and the emotional content of daydreaming and nighttime dreaming.
It found a significant correlation between daily COVID-19 worries and the emotional quality of daydreaming.
However, such daily worries didn’t directly impact the emotional quality of nighttime dreams or induce more nightmares.
The emotional content of nighttime dreams was more influenced by individuals who generally tend to worry more about COVID-19.
Key Facts:
- The study reveals a strong link between daily COVID-19-related worries and the emotional quality of daydreaming.
- COVID-19 worries on a particular day were not found to be linked to the emotional quality of nighttime dreams.
- Individuals who generally worry more about COVID-19 tend to have more negative dreams.
Source: University of Turku
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on the mental well-being of individuals worldwide. A recent study examines the relationship between COVID-19-related concerns, anxiety, and worry, and the emotional quality of daydreaming and nighttime dreaming during these challenging times.
We spend a large part of our days immersed in our inner experiences – daydreaming during the day and dreaming during the night. While there has been a lot of research on the effects of COVID on different aspects of people’s lives, we know little about how the pandemic has shaped people’s inner experiences.
A newly published study, conducted by an international team of researchers at the University of Turku, Finland, and UK and Australia, sought to understand how worry about COVID-19 is linked to the emotional content of daydreaming and nighttime dreaming.
In this study, more than a hundred of participants were asked how worried, anxious, and concerned they were during the COVID-19 pandemic. People also reported their daydreams every evening their nighttime dreams every morning upon awakening.
Analysis of more than 3000 reports of daydreams and nighttime dreams revealed a clear association between worry about COVID-19 during a particular day and the emotional quality of their daydreams the same day.
Specifically, on days when people experienced more worry about COVID-19, they also experienced more negative emotions and less positive emotions during daydreaming.
Individual differences play a major role
Unlike previous studies, worry about COVID-19 on a particular day was not related to the emotional quality of nighttime dreams or more nightmares. However, those individuals who generally tended to worry more about COVID-19, also tended to have more negative dreams.
These results suggest that daily fluctuations in worry may play a more significant role in shaping individuals’ inner experiences during the day than during the night.
“These findings do show that our experiences during the day are associated with our nighttime experiences, but our dreams seem to rely more on particular individual differences rather than what exactly happens during the day.
“This is important because these differences may explain why some individuals may have better or worse mental health and well-being,” comments Dr. Pilleriin Sikka, lead researcher of the study and a postdoctoral research fellow at Stanford University (US).
The study’s results also indicate the need to rely less on general questionnaires and to use more longitudinal measures that capture day-to-day variations in COVID-19 worry and inner experiences.
The researchers are now conducting a follow-up study, trying to understand whether the pandemic may have some lingering effects on people’s inner experiences. If you are interested in participating in the study, please follow this link: Mind Research Study.
About this emotion, daydreaming, and COVID-19 research news
Author: Tuomas Koivula
Source: University of Turku
Contact: Tuomas Koivula – University of Turku
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“COVID-19 on Mind: Daily Worry About the Coronavirus Is Linked to Negative Affect Experienced During Mind-Wandering and Dreaming” by Pilleriin Sikka et al. Emotion
Abstract
COVID-19 on Mind: Daily Worry About the Coronavirus Is Linked to Negative Affect Experienced During Mind-Wandering and Dreaming
Despite a surge of studies on the effects of COVID-19 on our well-being, we know little about how the pandemic is reflected in people’s spontaneous thoughts and experiences, such as mind-wandering (or daydreaming) during wakefulness and dreaming during sleep.
We investigated whether and how COVID-19-related general concern, anxiety, and daily worry are associated with the daily fluctuation of the affective quality of mind-wandering and dreaming, and to what extent these associations can be explained by poor sleep quality.
We used ecological momentary assessment by asking participants to rate the affect they experienced during mind-wandering and dreaming in daily logs over a 2-week period.
Our preregistered analyses based on 1,755 dream logs from 172 individuals and 1,496 mind-wandering logs from 152 individuals showed that, on days when people reported higher levels of negative affect and lower levels of positive affect during mind-wandering, they experienced more worry.
Only daily sleep quality was associated with affect experienced during dreaming at the within-person level: on nights with poorer sleep quality people reported experiencing more negative and less positive affect in dreams and were more likely to experience nightmares.
However, at the between-person level, individuals who experienced more daily COVID-19 worry during the study period also reported experiencing more negative affect during mind-wandering and during dreaming.
As such, the continuity between daily and nightly experiences seems to rely more on stable trait-like individual differences in affective processing.
