School of Psychology, College of Applied Health and Communities, University of East London, London, UK.
Department of Psychology, College of Human and Health Sciences, Swansea University, Swansea, UK.
J Sleep Res. 2019 Oct;28(5):e12827. doi: 10.1111/jsr.12827. Epub 2019 Mar 12.
Suppressing thoughts often leads to a "rebound" effect, both in waking cognition (thoughts) and in sleep cognition (dreams). Rebound may be influenced by the valence of the suppressed thought, but there is currently no research on the effects of valence on dream rebound. Further, the effects of dream rebound on subsequent emotional response to a suppressed thought have not been studied before. The present experiment aimed to investigate whether emotional valence of a suppressed thought affects dream rebound, and whether dream rebound subsequently influences subjective emotional response to the suppressed thought. Participants (N = 77) were randomly assigned to a pleasant or unpleasant thought suppression condition, suppressed their target thought for 5 min pre-sleep every evening, reported the extent to which they successfully suppressed the thought, and reported their dreams every morning for 7 days. It was found that unpleasant thoughts were more prone to dream rebound than pleasant thoughts. There was no effect of valence on the success or failure of suppression during wakefulness. Dream rebound and successful suppression were each found to have beneficial effects for subjective emotional response to both pleasant and unpleasant thoughts. The results may lend support for an emotion-processing theory of dream function.
抑制思维通常会导致“反弹”效应，无论是在清醒认知（思维）还是在睡眠认知（梦境）中。反弹可能受到被抑制思维的情绪效价的影响，但目前还没有研究情绪效价对梦境反弹的影响。此外，梦境反弹对随后对被抑制思维的情绪反应的影响之前也没有研究过。本实验旨在探讨被抑制思维的情绪效价是否会影响梦境反弹，以及梦境反弹是否会随后影响对被抑制思维的主观情绪反应。参与者（N=77）被随机分配到愉快或不愉快的思维抑制条件下，每天晚上睡前 5 分钟抑制他们的目标思维，并报告他们成功抑制思维的程度，连续 7 天每天早上报告他们的梦境。结果发现，不愉快的思维比愉快的思维更容易在梦中出现反弹。在清醒状态下，情绪效价对抑制的成功或失败没有影响。梦境反弹和成功抑制都对愉快和不愉快思维的主观情绪反应产生了有益的影响。研究结果可能为梦境功能的情绪处理理论提供支持。
