Study 2 aimed to replicate and extend the findings from Study 1 in two significant ways. First, we assessed psychological need experiences and dreams across three days, which allowed us to separate the within-person from the between-person variability in needs and dreams. The differentiation between these two levels provided the opportunity to examine whether the observed relation between psychological need frustration and dream content and emotions also applied at the day-to-day level. For themes reflective of psychological need frustration to surface in dreams, people need to experience an accumulation of psychological need frustration over longer periods of time. Thus, the question is whether variation in need-based functioning from day-to-day within a given person is sufficient for such experiences to play out in dreams. Second, we controlled for daily mood to account for the possibility that affectivity was driving the observed effects of need-based experiences, given that emotions have also been shown to relate to dream themes in previous research (Brown and Donderi 1986; Kallmeyer and Chang 1998). Technically, the observed dream effect of need-based experiences in Study 1 may be spurious, that is, driven by a third variable (i.e., mood) which we now control for. Congruent with Study 1, we again hypothesized a dual pathway model, with daily psychological need frustration relating to daily negative themes and negative dream emotions and daily psychological need satisfaction relating to daily positive dream emotions. These hypotheses were equally examined at the between-subject level, focusing on how more enduring need-related experiences link to dreaming across time.

Method

Participants and procedure

Participants were 110 students and adults (79 women) at the University of Essex, with ages ranging from 18 to 61 years (M = 25.09, SD = 12.18). Participants were recruited for a study titled “three days in your life…” and took part in exchange for course credit or monetary compensation, based on their preference. We conducted the study throughout the course of a semester and data collection ended at the end of the academic year. Participants first completed an initial survey assessing person-level variables (i.e., general psychological need satisfaction and frustration), and then completed surveys on three evenings and the three mornings following, on days Monday to Thursday. We did not test participants on weekends to avoid measuring on days with irregular sleep patterns (Lund et al. 2010). Email reminders were sent at 7:00, 9:00, and 11:00 pm to all participants who had not completed the study by that time; responses were completed between 5:37 pm and 4:15 am (M = 10:47 pm). All participants were asked to complete morning responses immediately upon waking and the morning survey closed at 12:00 pm. Seventy-one percent of participants completed all three evening measures; 18% completed two evening measures, and 11% completed only one evening measure. On each evening, participants reported on their psychological need satisfaction from that day and their positive or negative mood from that day (described below). In the mornings they reported on whether they had remembered their dreams (participants remembered their dreams 45.8% of the timeFootnote 2), and if they remembered their dreams, they also reported on the positive and negative dream emotions and themes as in Study 1 (present study reliabilities were high: α = .83 and α = .90 for positive and negative emotions, respectively). Rates of missing responses are comparable to those found in previous research using dream diaries (Schredl and Hofman 2003).

Additional materials

Person-level measures

General psychological need satisfaction and frustration

All participants completed the BPNSNFS (Chen et al. 2015) prior to beginning the diary study. Using the same scale and items as described in Study 1, two composite scores were created to reflect psychological need satisfaction, α = .79, and frustration, α = .81.

Day-level evening measures

Daily psychological need satisfaction and frustration

Participants reported on their daily psychological need satisfaction and frustration using the shortened version of the BPNSNFS (Chen et al. 2015; Van der Kaap-Deeder et al. 2017) from Study 1. Twelve items assessed the frustration and satisfaction of the basic psychological needs experienced that day using a 1 (not at all true) to 5 (extremely true) scale. Items included: “Today, I felt that my decisions reflected what I really want” (autonomy satisfaction) and, “Today, I felt that people who are important to me were cold and distant towards me” (relatedness frustration). Reliability for daily psychological need satisfaction averaged across days was α = .83 and α = .76 for daily psychological need frustration.

Daily mood

Participants responded to twenty items of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (Watson et al. 1988), assessing the degree to which they experienced negative (upset, ashamed) and positive (happy, hopeful) emotions. All items were rated on a scale of 1 (not at all) to 7 (extremely). Items were averaged to create a daily positive mood (α across all 3 days = .91) and a daily negative mood (α across all 3 days = .83) indicator.

Results

Statistical controls

Preliminary correlations (Table 3) showed relations between gender and more negative dream emotions, in line with Study 1 findings. As a result and to be consistent with the previous study, Study 2 analyses controlled for gender.

Table 3 Descriptive statistics and correlations among measured variables (Study 2) Full size table

Analytic strategy

Given the nested nature of the data, that is, days were nested within participants, hierarchical linear modeling (Bryk and Raudenbush 1992) was used which regressed dream outcomes from waking experiences defined both at the between- and within-subject level. To do this, we used HLM 7.01 (Science Software International [SSI]). HLM assumes data defined at level 1 to be normally distributed, but our level 1 predictors were moderately skewed (skewness ranged from .13 to .81); For consistency all predictors defined in these models were transformed to be normal. HLM is also better equipped to handle missing or unbalanced data than ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analyses because it uses full information maximum likelihood (ML) estimation which includes the missing data points in the analysis, and because it accounts for the random effects at Level 2 (Enders 2011; Enders and Peugh 2004; Little and Rubin 1989).

Specifically, models defined gender, general psychological need satisfaction and frustration at Level 2 (i.e., between-subject level), and daily positive mood, daily negative mood, daily psychological need satisfaction and frustration at Level 1 (i.e., within-subject level). Unconditional analyses conducted to attain the intraclass correlation (ICC) indicated that 23% of the variability in negative themes, 28% of the variability in positive dream emotions, and 40% of the variability in negative dream emotions, was between-subjects; in other words, much of the variability occurred on the day-to-day level. In line with recommendations (Bryk and Raudenbush 1992), variables at Level 1 were group centered whereas variables at Level 2 were grand centered. Given HLM accommodates and estimates missing data, all participant days were included in analyses regardless of dream recall on that day.

Primary results

Dream themes

A model predicting negative themes controlled for gender at level 2 and both positive and negative waking-life affect at level 1. See Table 4 for relations with these constructs and effect sizes, represented in terms of Pearson coefficient, r, for all indicators tested. Accounting for control variables, there were no links between the psychological need experiences of individuals, in general (i.e., at Level 2), and daily dream themes, ts < 1.63, ps > .11. Furthermore, there were no links between day level (i.e., Level 1) psychological need experiences and daily dream themes, ts < 0.54, ps > .59.Footnote 3

Table 4 results of hierarchical linear models including all variables defined at level 1 (day-level) and level 2 (person-level) (Study 2) Full size table

Dream emotions

Models predicting both positive and negative dream emotions controlled for gender at Level 2 and both positive and negative waking-life affect at Level 1. At the individual-difference level, psychological need satisfaction linked positively to both positive emotions reported in dreams across nights, b = 1.91 (95% CI [0.21, 3.62]), t(111) = 2.45, p = .02. and positive emotions in one’s dreams on a given night, b = 2.81 (95% CI [0.56, 5.06]), t(111) = 2.45, p = .02. Conversely, daily psychological need frustration related to less positive dream emotions, b = −1.83 (95% CI [− 3.50, 0.16]), t(111) = − 2.14, p = .03.

Furthermore, individuals who were generally more need frustrated reported more negative emotions in dreams across days, b = 1.33 (95% CI [0.10, 2.56]), t(111) = 2.12, p = .02 and also reported more negative dream emotions on a given day, b = 2.72 (95% CI [0.50, 4.94]), t(111) = 2.12, p = .04, as was hypothesized. In contrast, there was no relation between either general or daily psychological need satisfaction and negative emotions in dreams (See Table 4).Footnote 4

Brief discussion

Study 2 explored links between psychological need experiences and dream emotions and themes, but extended these findings to analyses at the daily level and across days. Findings indicated that on days in which individuals felt especially need frustrated, they experienced their dreams as having more negative emotions and fewer positive emotions. In addition, those who reported more psychological need frustration in their daily lives in general also reported that they remembered more negative emotions in their dreams, while those who reported more psychological need satisfaction in general recalled more positive emotions in their dreams, suggesting that more enduring waking experiences carry into dreams, and conceptually replicating Study 1. Moreover, these effects were in evidence after controlling for daily positive and negative affect, indicating that relations were more than an indicator of positive or negative tendencies in responding, or of the negative affect in waking life that might be elicited by such psychological need experiences (Reis et al. 2000). Different from Study 1, need-based experiences, either more enduring or on a day-to-day level, were unrelated to dream themes.

General discussion

The present research examined the extent to which waking-life experiences of psychological need frustration and satisfaction are expressed in recurring (Study 1) and daily (Study 2) dreams. We tested and found general support for our broad expectation that waking psychological need experiences are reflected in people’s dreams. By testing both recurring dreams and day-to-day variations in dream experiences we were able to examine more stable or cumulative effects as well as short-term correlates of both stable and everyday psychological need experiences. By examining how waking experiences are reflected in dreams, we aimed to contribute to current knowledge regarding how psychological need experiences are processed and manifest at less conscious levels. In addition, by examining the independent effects of psychological need satisfaction and frustration, we aimed to gain further insight into the fundamental dynamic differences between both, as assumed within the dual pathway model (Bartholomew et al. 2011; Vansteenkiste and Ryan 2013).

Dream themes

We found mixed support for the notion that experiences of psychological need frustration would be reflected in dream themes. In Study 1, those higher in general psychological need frustration reported recurring dreams characterized by negative dream themes, such as ‘falling’, ‘failing’ or ‘being attacked’; yet, such findings could not be replicated in Study 2. We provide two explanations for these findings. First, recurring dreams may be more sensitive to distressing psychological experiences that must be processed by the individual. In line with this, researchers and theorists have argued that recurring dreams challenge individuals to process the most pressing problems in their lives (Weiss 1964), and may be thought to result from individuals’ failure to adapt to challenging experiences (Brown and Donderi 1986; Klein et al. 1971). As such, dream content may be more affected by enduring need-based experiences, such as those assessed in Study 1. Alternatively, it might be that a third variable explains this relation when looking at the broad individual difference level over time. For example, lower general psychological well-being has been linked to recurring dreams, as has depression and other psychological disturbances (Brown and Donderi 1986; Cartwright and Romanek 1978; Renik 1981), but this possibility should be evaluated in future research.

Notably, there were no links between psychological need satisfaction and dream themes, which may be due to the fact that all of the dream themes we studied were negative. It may be that psychological need satisfaction would be more closely linked with positive themes in dreams, although such links may be difficult to detect because positive themes in dreams are more rare and subtle than negative ones (Curci and Rimé 2008; Schredl and Doll 1998).

If future research supports the role that dream themes are more closely linked to psychological need frustrations, which are thought to elicit psychological threat and dysfunction more so than merely the absence of psychological need satisfaction (Vansteenkiste and Ryan 2013), this would support theorizing that dream elements may be expressions of negative experiences that were difficult to process in waking-life (Freud 1913/2010; Jung 1948/1974; Perls et al. 1973). Such findings are congruent with the proposed function of dreaming as an opportunity for psychological integration of waking experiences. Within SDT, such self-integration, or the organization of important materials into one’s self, is thought to support behavioral regulation and learning (Payne 1985; Deci and Ryan 1991). In line with this view, it has been argued that dreams function to help integrate threatening or painful experiences into the self, and by doing so to gain mastery over waking life themes by replaying meaningful problems or conflicts in dream themes (Adler 1927/1963; De Monchaux 1993; Erikson 1954; Jones 1962; Jung 1948/1974). If Study 1 findings are replicated with recurring dreams, this would point to a functionality of dreams as helping to process psychological need frustrating experiences that are more threatening to the waking self. Alternatively, it may also be that those who are more capable of integrating psychological need frustration themes in their waking lives, for example, those who score higher on measures of emotional integration or self-congruence (Roth et al. 2014; Weinstein et al. 2012) may show weaker associations with dream contents given these have already been processed during waking hours.

It is important to recognize that while we focused on the subjective experience of psychological need frustration as a predictor of dream content in these studies, it might be the case that need thwarting environments are more responsible for shaping the contents of dreams. As an example, while it might be relatively easier to process one’s experience of being lonely (i.e., relatedness psychological need frustration), the events that brought on such feelings—in this case perhaps being socially rejected—might be more psychologically threatening and difficult to process in waking life. In this case as well, individuals might struggle to identify ways to cope with such events, and might be challenged by their broader implications for the self. In the current studies we did not assess the need thwarting context and, hence, cannot disentangle the experience of psychological need frustration as such from the events that gave rise to the experience. In the future, researchers might include measures of both need-relevant life events as well as experiences of need fulfillment or frustration to examine whether they differentially predict outcomes.

Emotional experiences

More robust than the association with dream themes, results supported the role of psychological need frustration in negative emotions in dreams, both when examining individual differences in (Study 1), and daily variations of (Study 2), being need frustrated. Psychological need satisfaction, on the other hand, did not relate to negative dream emotions in either study. Overall, the results indicated that individuals whose needs were frustrated reported more negative emotions in their dreams. To account for the possibility that these individuals were simply suffering from a general “cloud” of negative affect which colored their interpretation of real-life psychological need experiences and dream themes, in Study 2 we controlled for affect so as to account for the possibility that dreams would be influenced by emotions rather than actual psychological need experiences. Notably, in contrast to previous research which found a link between emotions and dreams (e.g., Brown and Donderi 1986; Kallmeyer and Chang 1998), in Study 2 affect did not relate directly to either dream themes or emotions, suggesting that dream emotions may be more robustly linked to need-laden experiences than recent emotions. We may understand this within the same theoretical framework as when interpreting the role of themes in dreams: Negative dream emotions may have directly resulted from distressing dream events, which as we note above, might represent the psyche’s attempt to process and make sense of particularly psychologically challenging waking experiences (Freud 1913/2010; Jung 1948/1974; Perls et al. 1973).

Further, reports of emotions in dreams may be more subject to the dreamer’s interpretation than reports of themes, yet this subjectivity may be of practical importance in its own right. Indeed, in Gestalt therapy such interpretations of dreams are thought to provide an important foundation for self-exploration and a basis for discussing more difficult, painful, or ambiguous aspects of one’s life; as such these interpretations offer opportunities for deeper self-insight and useful tools in therapy (Perls et al. 1973; Simkin 1972). It may be then that therapists can explore dream interpretations as a way of understanding important psychological need experiences, particularly with clients that are more easily threatened by more direct explorations (Newman 2002; Speisman 1959).

On the other hand, while psychological need satisfaction did not link to negative emotions in dreams in either study, daily variations in psychological need satisfaction related to more positive emotions in the subsequent night’s dreams. This finding was not found in Study 1 when examining links between psychological need satisfaction and positive emotions in recurring dreams, but this is not entirely surprising given our hypothesized associations here are less well-grounded in theory (e.g., Jung 1948/1974; Perls et al. 1973) than the hypothesized associations for psychological need frustration.

Overall, the finding that psychological need satisfaction was associated with more positive dream emotions in Study 2, and psychological need frustration with more negative dream themes and emotions is in line with the proposed dual pathway model within SDT which holds that psychological need frustration should be related more strongly to negative outcomes and psychological need satisfaction more strongly to positive outcomes (e.g., Bartholomew et al. 2011). The present research adds to this body of work by providing further evidence for the independent role of psychological need satisfaction and frustration at both the interpersonal and intrapersonal level, with these two constructs being related to differential outcomes (Vansteenkiste and Ryan 2013). In relating to dreams, the measure of psychological need frustration was a more informative predictor than a composite score of psychological needs would have been, and testifies to the incremental value of this approach.

Implications

The present findings also have implications for past work which has identified a relation between individual differences in materialism and mindfulness and dream themes and emotions (e.g., Kasser and Kasser 2001; Simor et al. 2011). Indeed, both materialism and mindfulness have been previously linked to lower and higher psychological need satisfaction, respectively (e.g., Brown and Ryan 2003; Dittmar et al. 2014). While materialism is thought to undermine psychological needs through the pursuit of extrinsic goals such as wealth and material successes which are inherently unsatisfying, it is proposed that mindfulness, which involves an open awareness of and receptivity to present experiences, relates to higher psychological need satisfaction through greater attunement to cues for and selection of psychological need satisfying activities (see Campbell et al. 2015). The results of the present research, in conjunction with past findings, suggest that psychological need experiences may be underlying mechanisms which help to explain why mindfulness and materialism relate to dream outcomes, an issue which could be explored in future research.

In addition, although past work has sought to highlight the differences between daily dreams and recurrent dreams (e.g. Brown and Donderi 1986), the results of the present research suggest that the pathway to both may be similar, particularly when dream themes are negative. While it is notable that recurring dreams present the same thematic elements over intervals of weeks, months or even longer, while daily dreams typically present more variation in thematic themes, the results of the present research suggest that psychological need frustration may play a central role in the etiology of both types of bad dreams. It seems plausible that when psychological need frustration persists over time, the unresolved psychological conflict may promote daily bad dreams to reoccur and develop into recurrent dreams.

Limitations and suggestions for future research

The present research presents some notable limitations which should be taken into consideration when interpreting the results. Three of these have to do with the surveys used, and can be rectified in future research. First, all measures were retrospective in nature and therefore subject to recall bias. One way of reducing this bias would be to assess dream reports throughout the night in a sleep laboratory, directly after dreams are experienced. For example, participants’ could be woken at regular intervals and asked to record their dream into a tape recorder (e.g., McNamara et al. 2014). Notably, negative dream emotions and themes may also help to explain why psychological need frustration is predictive of poorer sleep (Campbell et al. 2017). A further concern, Study 1 asked participants to think back as far as they choose to their recurring dreams, and measured psychological need satisfaction ‘in general’, a potentially problematic method which may have resulted in participants reporting on psychological need satisfaction experienced more recently than their dream content; future research can use retrospective data which more carefully specifies and, hence matches, time periods for waking and sleep experiences. Third, to reduce participant burden during repeated measurements, we used a brief version of the BPNSNFS to measure psychological needs, and as such conclusions were drawn from a somewhat exploratory assessment of this construct. Although this brief version was used in past research (Van der Kaap-Deeder et al. 2017), in future work researchers could use the full scale for greater confidence in the findings.

In addition to these concerns, Study 2 showed large amounts (45.8%) of missing data, primarily due to participants not recalling their dreams, and results based on this study may have been affected by this. Although as previously noted, in research utilizing dream diaries people often fail to recall their dreams (e.g., Schredl and Hofman 2003). Thus, this is perhaps an issue inherent to the study of the daily dynamics in dreams. Furthermore, estimating missing values has previously been shown to be a reliable approach, even for large amounts of missing data (Enders 2011; Enders and Peugh 2004; Little and Rubin 1989) and our analyses of the truncated sample of participants who remembered their dreams produced similar results.

Third, the present research relied solely on self-reports of dreams and psychological need experiences. To address the issue of shared method variance, future studies could use more concrete and varied measurements of psychological need frustration. For example, implicit measures could be used to assess feelings of psychological need frustration or an experimental design could be used to examine the role of psychological need frustrating themes (e.g. failing a test or receiving negative feedback) on subsequent dreams at night. In this context, Van der Kaap-Deeder et al. (2016) demonstrated that experimentally induced negative feedback caused lasting rumination and lack of acceptance among self-critical individuals, a need-thwarting experience that may also manifest via dreams.

Furthermore, both studies were conducted with samples which were mainly comprised of students and therefore not representative of the general population. Hence, there is a need to replicate these results in more diverse community samples and across distinct cultures. Finally, an avenue for future work is the exploration of the salience (i.e., recall and vividness) of psychological need experiences as reflected in dream themes and emotions. Some early psychological approaches to dream recall have argued that when dreams are overly threatening, individuals are less likely to recall them (Lachman et al. 1962); whereas others have argued that overwhelming themes in dreams can increase recall because individuals become fixated on it (Wallach 1963); future studies can examine such questions in the context of psychological need experiences.