Ever had a girlfriend get mad at your for your selfish, boorish behaviour you exhibited—during her dream last night? Well, settle down, you’re not alone—and you may be guilty of the same thing.
A study published in Social Psychological & Personality Science has found that the way people in relationships dream about their significant other can affect how they treat said significant other during the day after the dream. For the study, 61 undergraduates with relationships of over six months had to keep dream journals for two weeks. Each evening, they also had to record the events of the day, including the state of their relationship with their significant others.
Curiously, a night’s dream seemed to relate to a persons behaviour during the following day. Dreams of arguing, for example, tended to be followed by a real argument during the day. Dreams of jealously were followed by lower feelings of intimacy, and sex dreams were followed by greater feelings of intimacy—but only if the relationship was stable. In an unstable relationship, sex dreams were followed by yet more feelings of lower intimacy.
Scientists have yet to figure out why this apparent relationship between our dreams and our behaviour during the following day exists, but we have a theory: we’re a stupid, stupid species, and if getting mad at each other about stuff we dreamed is the least bad thing we do today, it’ll be a good day.
