A study tracking more than 3,300 dream logs kept by 207 Italian adults has found that personality traits and daily experience together determine what people dream about, according to research published in Communications Psychology.
Participants recorded their dreams and daytime events every day from 2020 to 2024. They also completed tests measuring memory, attention, personality and sleep quality.
Comparing dreams to waking-life accounts, researchers found that dreams contained less self-reflection and more vivid imagery, varied characters and unusual events than everyday experience.
How personality shapes dreams
Personality played a distinct role in dream content. People prone to mind-wandering tended to have more fragmented, kaleidoscopic dreams. Those inclined to search for deeper meaning in their dreams reported more emotionally intense and realistic ones with greater detail.
The researchers also examined records from the first strict COVID-19 lockdown in spring 2020. During that period, dreams more often contained feelings of restriction and stronger emotions. Those patterns gradually faded as life in Italy returned to normal.
The researchers wrote that stable individual traits and everyday experiences together shaped the meaning and content of dreams. They said the findings could help psychologists and doctors working with anxiety, nightmares and sleep disorders better understand how the brain processes emotions, memories and stress.
