Gender differences in dream content: Are they related to personality?

Abstract

Gender differences in dream content have been studied quite extensively. The present study focused on two dream characteristics, the ratio of male and female dream characters and the occurrence of weapons and clothes in dreams. A sample of 1612 diary dreams reported by 425 participants was analyzed using external ratings by a blind judge. Whereas the gender differences regarding the ratio of male and female dream characters was not significant, men reported more weapon dreams but dreams with references to clothing less often, which is in line with previous research. The explorative analyses indicated that some of the big five personality dimensions might be associated with these dream characteristics, e.g., extraverted men’s dreams included more female characters compared to the dreams of introverted men. Research thus far and this study indicate that waking-life (preoccupation with clothes, media showing weapons, waking-life social contacts, etc.) strongly affects these dream characteristics but studies explicitly measuring and correlating waking-life experiences and dream content are still missing.