Individual traits and experiences predict the content of dreams.

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Dreams are shaped both by who you are and what’s happening in your waking life.

Why do some people have vivid, emotional dreams while others dream differently? This study combines thousands of dream reports with detailed information about participants' sleep, cognition and daily experiences to explore how both stable personal traits and shared life events influence the content of our dreams.

Part 1: the impact of stable traits

The authors collected 3,366 reports (1,687 dreams and 1,679 waking thought reports) from 207 participants between 2020 and 2024. Participants also completed questionnaires on their demographics, sleep, personality, and attitudes towards dreaming, as well as cognitive tests. The researchers then used validated AI models to analyze every report and identify which stable characteristics were linked to differences in dream content

People who placed greater value on dreams reported having more visual, emotional, and bizarre dreams. Meanwhile, people who reported more mind-wandering tended to have more bizarre dreams with more changes in setting.

Part 2: the impact of experience

To understand how shared experiences influence dreaming, the researchers analyzed an independent dataset of 80 participants who kept dream diaries during the first Italian COVID-19 lockdown. They compared these dreams with reports collected after restrictions were lifted, then tracked how dream content changed over the following four years.

Dreams recorded during lockdown were more emotionally intense and contained more references to social interactions and limitations than those recorded afterward. These differences gradually declined over time, suggesting that dreams adapt as our shared experiences change.

Elce, V., Bontempi, G., Scarpelli, S. et al. Individual traits and experiences predict the content of dreams. Commun Psychol 4, 69 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-026-00447-2