Viral simulations in dreams : The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on threatening dream content in a Finnish sample of diary dreams

Previous research indicates that the COVID-19 pandemic has affected dreaming negatively. We compared 1132 dreams collected with prospective two-week dream diary during the pandemic to 166 dreams collected before the pandemic. We hypothesized that the pandemic would increase the number of threatening events, threats related to diseases, and the severity of threats. We also hypothesized that dreams that include direct references to the pandemic will include more threatening events, more disease-related threats, and more severe threats. In contradiction with our hypotheses, results showed no differences between pandemic and pre-pandemic samples in the number of threats, threats related to diseases, or severe threats. However, dreams with direct references to the pandemic had more threats, disease-related threats, and severe threats. Our results thus do not suggest a significant overall increase in nightmarish or threatening dream content during the pandemic but show a more profound effect on a minority of dreams.
CC BY 4.0 DEED© 2024 The AuthorsCorrespondence Address: V. Loukola; Department of Psychology and Speech-Language Pathology, University of Turku, Turku, Assistentinkatu 7, FIN-20014, Finland; email: vitalo@utu.fi; CODEN: COCOFThis work was supported by research grants from Signe and Ane Gyllenberg Foundation (grant numbers 5306 and 5774), TOP Foundation (grant number 20210206) and Turku University Foundation (grant numbers 080985 and 081199) (V.L).