Garrett Baber and his co-authors analyzed dream reports from more than 500 people, employing machine learning to sort emotions reported in dreams. Then they compared those dreamt emotions to participants’ emotional states the following day.
Photo Credit: Guilherme Coelho
Scientific Frontline: Extended "At a Glance" Summary: Dream Emotion Processing and Waking Mood Regulation
The Core Concept: The psychological process by which emotions experienced during dreams—specifically fear and joy—influence an individual's emotional state upon waking. It examines the hypothesis that dreaming acts as a form of natural "exposure therapy," allowing the brain to safely process and regulate difficult waking emotions.
Key Distinction/Mechanism: Contrary to early theoretical assumptions that more fear in dreams strictly predicts a better waking mood via exposure therapy, empirical data shows a dual effect: while elevated fear in dreams correlates with a worse mood the immediate following morning, individuals who utilize adaptive emotion regulation strategies (like acceptance rather than suppression) experience higher average levels of dream-state fear. Furthermore, a mechanism of "emotional complexity"—experiencing both fear and joy simultaneously within a dream—demonstrates a protective effect, actively reducing the likelihood of a negative morning mood.
Origin/History: Historically grounded in early neuroscientific and psychological theories that dreams simulate threatening environments to build waking resilience. This specific model was advanced in a 2026 study published in the journal Sleep by University of Kansas researchers, who modernized the hypothesis by utilizing customized large language models (LLMs) to quantify emotional values in large-scale dream datasets.
Major Frameworks/Components:
- Machine Learning Affective Analysis: The use of customized large language models to objectively read, classify, and mathematically quantify specific emotions (e.g., fear, joy) within subjective dream reports.
- Exposure Therapy Hypothesis of Dreaming: The theoretical framework suggesting that encountering fear in the physiologically safe environment of sleep builds tolerance for waking emotional distress.
- Emotional Complexity: The simultaneous occurrence of conflicting emotions (fear and joy) within a single dream state, which functions as an active emotional regulator.
- Adaptive Emotion Regulation: Psychological strategies, such as emotional acceptance, that correlate positively with increased dream-state fear, indicating resilience rather than distress.
Branch of Science: Clinical Psychology, Neuroscience, and Computational Psychology.
Future Application: The methodology and findings offer a framework for differentiating between standard bad dreams (which may signify neurological resilience and active emotional processing) and clinical nightmares (such as those symptomatic of PTSD). This distinction is critical for refining targeted therapies for chronic sleep disturbances and trauma-related nightmare disorders.
Why It Matters: It provides empirical, data-driven insight into the neurological and psychological purpose of dreaming, challenging the perception that distressing dreams are inherently harmful. By establishing a link between emotionally complex dreams and waking emotional stability, it enhances the clinical understanding of human resilience and subconscious emotional processing.
There are a few reasons why we might dream, say the neuroscientists. Even dreams that are scary may serve a purpose: One prevalent idea is fear in dreams could help people deal with fear in waking life, much like exposure therapy.
One University of Kansas researcher tested this concept and recently published results in the peer-reviewed journal Sleep. Garrett Baber, a KU doctoral student in clinical psychology, sought to test whether emotions experienced within dreams — like fear and joy — change feelings the following morning.
“The idea I’ve been most interested in was whether emotions in our dreams have any impact on our emotions in the day,” Baber said. “We’re in a safe environment in our dreams. We cannot technically be harmed. If all goes wrong in a dream, we wake up. As long as sleep is not really disrupted, if it’s not rising to the level of a nightmare, fear in our dreams might actually help us better deal with our emotions in the day.”
To find out, Baber and his co-authors analyzed dream reports from more than 500 people, employing machine learning to sort emotions reported in dreams. Then they compared those dreamt emotions to participants’ emotional states the following day.
“We wanted to apply new methods with bigger data,” he said. “We had a much larger sample than a lot of studies use and used some advanced statistics to apply a more rigorous approach to testing why we dream. I didn’t reinvent the wheel in terms of creating a theory. I just wanted to put them to the test.”
With the larger datasets, the researchers applied a customized large-language model to classify and quantify dreamt emotions, according to Baber.
“I trained it to measure fear as well as joy,” he said. “I asked it to read the dream text and produce a number for how afraid the person was in their dream, as well as how much positive emotion was present.”
The KU researcher said if the “exposure therapy” idea held, more fear in dreams should predict a better mood the following day.
“But we found two different results,” Baber said. “On the day-to-day level, more fear in dreams was associated with worse mood in the morning. However, people who reported using more adaptive emotion regulation strategies — such as acceptance rather than suppression — showed higher levels of fear in their dreams on average.”
In other words, Baber said there was a discrepancy in the findings.
“In the short term, more fear in dreams is associated with worse mood,” he said. “But at the individual level, people who are better at handling their emotions tend to have more fear in their dreams.”
Another finding involved the researchers measuring joy in dreams as well as fear.
“We examined whether emotional complexity — experiencing multiple emotions at once — had any effect,” Baber said. “We found when dreams contained both fear and joy at the same time, people were less likely to report negative mood in the morning. This was a novel finding. It suggests that emotional complexity in dreams may have a protective effect.”
But when does the “emotional processing” or “regulation” take place: during a dream or when we reflect upon a dream?
“There is no consensus on when emotional processing happens,” Baber said. “Early work assumed it occurs during the dream itself. I am testing whether it may be more important how dreams affect us later in the day. This study focused on the morning, but it may be that effects unfold much later. An emerging theory suggests that changes within the dream itself may reflect emotional regulation. The presence of both fear and joy may be an example of this.”
The next step, according to Baber, is testing whether there is a difference between dreams that involve fear, or a mixture of fear and joy, and clinical nightmares.
“Nightmares are typically defined as dreams that are so distressing they wake the person up, versus bad dreams where the person remains asleep,” he said. “There are effective therapies for chronic nightmares, particularly for people with PTSD, where nightmares about traumatic experiences are common. There may be nuance in whether some forms of distressing dreams represent the brain trying to process emotions.”
Baber noted that while chronic nightmares are associated with negative outcomes like mental and physical health challenges which warrant attention, the average bad dream might actually be a sign of the brain's resilience.
Published in journal: Sleep
Title: Testing affect regulation theories of dreaming
Authors: Garrett R. Baber, Nancy A. Hamilton, Jeffrey M. Girard, Pilleriin Sikka, Amber Watts, Daiil Jun, Matthew K. P. Gratton, Jamie M. Cohen, Anna K. Quesada, Elijah C. Nichols, Tony J. Cunningham
Source/Credit: University of Kansas | Brendan M. Lynch
Reference Number: psy041426_01
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