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Nonwaking Responses to Waking Stressors: Dreams and Nightmares 1
Author(s) -
Loveland Cook Cynthia A.,
Caplan Robert D.,
Wolowitz Howard
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.1990.tb00407.x
Subject(s) - psychology , stressor , cognition , affect (linguistics) , developmental psychology , social psychology , clinical psychology , psychiatry , communication
A distinction between self‐reported dreams and nightmares made it possible to test the relative sensitivity of these nonwaking cognitions to different kinds of life stressors including combat expasure, childhood and adolescent stressom, and recent life events. Survey interview data were collected on 442 men from the cohort eligible for military duty during the Vietnam Conflict who varied in their partiapation in that war. Dreams were over 3.5 times more prevalent than nightmares. Nevertheless, it was the prevalence, frequency, and content of nightmares, not dreams, that were consistently associated with life stresors. Links between nonwaking cognitions and life stressors are explored with regard to hypothesized mechanisms involving affect and cognition, wish fulfillment, and working‐through processes.