Abstract
The aim of this study was to examine the relation between nightmares, bad dreams, and emotional changes after dreaming through the research question “Are there gender differences in nightmare/bad dream frequency and emotional change after dreaming?”. Frequent nightmares can inflict several negative effects on emotions and emotional regulation abilities which can lead to the development of different psychopathologies. Women is seemingly at a higher risk of experiencing these effects because of higher nightmare frequencies, higher emotional impact from dreams, and poorer emotional regulation abilities. 87 participants responded to an electronic survey every day over a 4-week period, the survey addressed different factors which can influence or be influenced by dreaming. The results demonstrate no significant gender difference in nightmare frequency. However, gender differences in emotional change after dreaming was found. Both genders experiences negative emotional change after nightmares and bad dreams, while only women reported significant positive emotional change. Meanwhile, no gender differences in mean amount of emotional change were discovered. Without accounting for gender differences there was only a relation to negative emotional change. To conclude, the present results demonstrate that there were no gender differences in nightmare/ bad dream frequency, but there were gender differences in emotional change after dreaming. Future studies should take inspiration from the current study and include measures for both positive and negative emotional change. However, the measure for emotional change was not ideal therefore more comprehensive measures should be implemented in future studies.
