🎗️Do You Share Your Nightmares or Prefer To Forget Them? Your Personality Might Have Something To Do With It
Do you wake up from a nightmare and tell someone about it, try to figure out what it means, or simply prefer to forget it? A new study investigated whether our personality influences what we do after having a nightmare. The results were surprising: some characteristics showed little to no connection to our coping strategies, while extroversion appeared to be subtly linked to a tendency to talk about bad dreams.
Nightmares are quite common experiences, but for some people, they occur frequently and can interfere with sleep and daily life. In Germany, about one in twenty people reports having nightmares at least once a week. Even so, the issue can go unnoticed and does not always receive the attention it warrants.
Given this, researchers sought to better understand what people do after having a nightmare and whether these choices might be related to their personality. The central question was simple: does being more extroverted, anxious, open to new experiences, or possessing other personality traits change the way we handle a nightmare?
To investigate this, researchers conducted an online survey with 411 people, the majority of whom were psychology students. Participants completed questionnaires that had been used and validated in previous studies to assess their key personality traits.
The study employed the "Big Five" model, which describes personality based on five broad traits: extraversion, openness to experience, neuroticism, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. The aim was not to pigeonhole individuals into a single category, but rather to measure the extent to which each of these traits was present in every participant.
Next, the researchers specifically investigated how these individuals typically coped with their nightmares. To do this, they used a coping scale adapted for the study. Participants indicated which strategies they employed after a nightmare and also rated how effective they believed those strategies to be.
The behaviors examined included, for instance, talking about the nightmare, seeking information about it, or avoiding situations the individual believed might trigger another nightmare. In this way, the researchers were able to analyze two distinct aspects: what people did and how effective they perceived those actions to be.
Before analyzing the data, the researchers made some predictions. They imagined that people with greater openness to experience would be more likely to seek out information about their nightmares, while more extroverted people would likely talk about them more.
They also expected that people with higher levels of neuroticism, a trait related to greater sensitivity to negative emotions and stress, would be more likely to avoid potential nightmare triggers. These predictions were based on the idea that different personality characteristics could influence how a person reacts to an unpleasant experience during sleep.
The results, however, were different from what was expected in some points. Extroversion showed a small positive association with the habit of talking about nightmares. In other words, more extroverted people showed a slightly greater tendency to talk about these experiences.
However, openness to new experiences failed to predict who would seek information about nightmares, and neuroticism also failed to predict who would avoid potential triggers. The researchers also carried out additional analyzes to look for other possible relationships between personality, coping strategies and the perceived effectiveness of these strategies. These analyzes suggested some additional associations, including those related to demographic characteristics, but the effects found were small.
The study shows, therefore, that our personality may have some influence on how we handle nightmares, but that influence appears to be minor. This is significant because it means we cannot simply assume that an anxious person will necessarily avoid situations related to their nightmares, or that someone open to new experiences will always try to better understand their dreams.
How we deal with nightmares likely depends on various factors beyond personality, including our past experiences, sleep habits, life circumstances, and individual characteristics.
Since the research primarily involved the general population rather than a group of patients with nightmare disorder, the results should not be automatically applied to explain the experiences of people suffering from frequent, debilitating nightmares. Nevertheless, the study helps demonstrate that even the way we react to events during sleep can reveal interesting aspects of our behavior and personality.
READ MORE:
Nightmare Coping Strategies and Their Association With Big Five Personality Traits
Wiesenthal J. and Schredl M.
Journal of Sleep Research e70374.Â
Abstract:Â
Although about 5% of the German population report having nightmares at least once a week, nightmares are inadequately diagnosed and treated. We therefore examined how people in the general population cope with nightmares in everyday life. The present study aimed to examine the influence of Big Five personality traits on nightmare-coping behaviour. In an online survey of 411 participants (mostly psychology students), we used established questionnaires and a modified coping scale to assess strategy use and perceived effectiveness. We hypothesized that openness predicts information seeking, extraversion predicts discussing nightmares, and neuroticism predicts avoiding potential nightmare triggers. The findings revealed that extraversion had a small positive effect on talking about nightmares (β = 0.44, p < 0.05). Contrary to our hypotheses, openness did not predict information seeking and neuroticism did not predict trigger avoidance. Exploratory analyses suggested further trait–coping links and that demographic variables may relate to perceived effectiveness of coping strategies. Overall, personality was related to some nightmare-specific coping behaviours, but effects were small in this non-clinical sample.
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