Cultural differences in dream emotions between Japanese and Chinese college students

Abstract

The present study aimed to examine differences in dream emotions between Japanese and Chinese.
206 Japanese college students and 248 Chinese college students completed questionnaires such as parts of the Manheim Dream Questionnaire (MADRE) (Schredl et al., 2014) , descriptions of recent impressive dreams, and subjective dream emotional ratings of 8 emotions. Dream descriptions were analyzed using a developed version of the Structural Dream Analysis (Roesler, 2018b). The results showed that there are statistically significant differences in the dream emotions experienced by Japanese and Chinese college students. Chinese college students experienced more positive emotions such as joy/happiness, contentment, and love, and more anger in their dreams than Japanese college students. Japanese college students experienced more negative emotions such as anxiety/fear and confusion/shock than their Chinese college students. These differences were interpreted as reflecting cultural characteristics such as interpersonal relationships and emotional expressions unique to the country. The results of this study would support the continuity hypothesis of dreams.