The constancy of typical dreams

Abstract

The present study investigated the stabilities of the relative incidence of typical themes and ancient Chinese sex symbols in dreams across two samples. The modified Typical Dreams Questionnaire was administered to 280 upper-secondary school and 348 university participants in Hong Kong. Several differences between the upper-secondary school and university participants were identified. For instance, theme ‘being inappropriately dressed’ ranked higher in the upper-secondary school sample than in the university sample, whereas theme ‘being nude’ ranked lower in the former than in the latter. Similarly, the upper-secondary school participants experienced less frequently the theme ‘sexual experiences’ than did the university participants. Despite these nuanced developmental idiosyncrasies of typical dreams, the converging results of the regression, effect size and correlation analyses indicate that the prevalence and frequency profiles of typical dream themes are highly similar for the two samples. Furthermore, the present study replicated the previous finding that the overall profile for the relative incidence of typical dream themes is highly stable across cultures. This has important implications for the universality of typical dreams and the mechanisms and functional significance of dream formation.