Having to study for a competitive exam can be stressful especially when you have a dream that you failed it. Approximately 80% of college students express negative emotions and dreams in stressful situations (Hall & Van de Castle, 1966). In one study, researchers hypothesized whether dreaming about an entrance exam such as the MCAT led to high success or failure rates on the exam the following day (Arnulf et al., 2014). First-year students hoping to attend medical school, dental school, pharmacy school, and midwifery school took a survey based on their quality of sleep, hours spent sleeping, dreams the night preceding the exam, dreams during other nights, and the time spent preparing for the exam to get a better understanding of sleep and dream habits along with the anxiety of participants. Nearly all participants had dreamt about failing the exam the night before the exam due to arriving late or having trouble answering questions. Dreaming about the exam and reporting it predicted higher scores on the exam regardless of the negativeness of the dream. These results support the Threat Simulation Theory which states that we use our dream as a defense mechanism in threatening events suggesting that dreams reflect our worries ( (Domhoff, 2011). It also optimized performance on the exam the next day because some students had the benefit of addressing their weaknesses in subjects the following day (Hall & Van de Castle, 1966). Dreams serve as a checklist to prepare for possible situations that could occur during the exam so that the student succeeds.
Arnulf, I., Grosliere, L., Le Corvec, T., Golmard, J. L., Lascols, O., & Duguet, A. (2014). Will students pass a competitive exam that they failed in their dreams? Consciousness and Cognition, 29, 36–47. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2014.06.010
Domhoff, G. W. (2011). Dreams are embodied simulations that dramatize conceptions and concerns: The continuity hypothesis in empirical, theoretical, and historical context. International Journal of Dream Research, 4(2), 50–62.
Hall, C., & Van de Castle, R. (1966). The content analysis of dreams.
I love this post because it is so relevant. I just woke up this morning from a dream that I absolutely bombed an anatomy quiz.
ReplyDeleteTrying to expand on what you wrote, I wondered whether there could possibly be small variations between either dream recall or dream details that could benefit or hinder somebody's performance during the day or, for example, exam performance. Women have a higher dream recall than men (Schredl, 2009). Schredl studied a plethora of factors that appear in dreams (i.e. thin boundaries, open to experience, creativity) and their subsequent effect on mood. The most impactful factors were nightmares, positive emotions, negative emotions, neuroticism, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and (surprise, surprise) stress (Schredl, 2009). Schredl did not specify how mood was affected. If dreams serve to prepare humans for possible situations and can impact mood the following day, then I wonder if women have an advantage in being prepare due to having a higher dream recall than men.
Schredl, M. (2009). Effect of Dreams on Daytime Mood: The effects of gender and personality. Sleep and Hypnosis. https://www.sleepandhypnosis.org/ing/Pdf/6bf34bdc38bd4beeae002674be6c0685.pdf
I have always been fascinated by dreams and this post opened a new world of ideas on the purpose of dreaming. In your post you said that those who dreamt about the exam performed better but I wonder if that is still true for those who have testing anxiety. According to the learning center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, test anxiety is a mix of physical, emotional, and cognitive symptoms caused by high anxiety and prevents a person from performing well on an exam. I wonder if dreaming about the exam would help those with testing anxiety feel less anxious or only increase their worries about the exam.
ReplyDeletehttps://learningcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/tackling-test-anxiety/
I also have been dreaming a lot about class and upcoming quizzes/tests! I woke up multiple times last night from some weird fever dream involving the ependymal cells of the choroid plexus. I wish I was exaggerating. I went through my nervous system anki deck before bed, and brains kept popping up as a central theme in my dreams. I agree with your final sentence, however, and think it is a good sign! We know that dreaming is a sign of consolidating recent memories (Wamsley, 2014), so I think it's a good sign for us as students. All the things we study and go over are undoubtedly fortified as we sleep. I'm willing to sacrifice having interesting dreams if it means a higher GPA! One issue with this though is the indication that we are under a high amount of stress. Hopefully we won't dream about school over our fall break!
ReplyDeleteWamsley E. J. (2014). Dreaming and offline memory consolidation. Current neurology and neuroscience reports, 14(3), 433. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11910-013-0433-5
Prior to starting Grad School, I had never experienced an exam dream. Since I’ve started classes I have had exam dreams almost every other night. I wish I was joking about this. One of the recurring dreams I have is the need to perfectly rehearse the hemolytic pathways in order to save a patient’s life in the emergency room. Gets me every time.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the Threat Simulation Theory you mentioned caught my attention. A study done by Mathes et al. (2019) state the Threat Simulation Theory to have evolved as simulations of threatening events of the waking-life into dreams to rehearse the threatening situations. Two of the Big Five Personality Traits play an important role in dreams: Neuroticism and Openness (Mathes et al. 2019). Neurotiscim is a personality trait characterized by sadness, moodiness, and emotional instability; Openness just emphasizes the broad range of interests (Power and Pluess, 2015). Mathes et al. (2019) stated individuals with high neuroticism and low openness will have frequent threats in dreams.
These arguments could link to reasons as to why students may have these exam dreams. I feel like depending on the person having these dreams, if rather than dwelling on the dream and tapping into their emotional resiliency they could use their threatening dream to do great on the exam. However, these people scoring high neuroticism could potentially struggle with these dreams and become more anxious.
I’d say if these dreams are a simulation of our waking life, then I am going to use it to my advantage.
Power RA, Pluess M. Heritability estimates of the Big Five personality traits based on common genetic variants. Translation Psychiatry. 2015;5:e604. doi:10.1038/tp.2015.96
Mathes, J., Weiger, N., Gieselmann, A., & Pietrowsky, R. (2019). The threat simulation in nightmares—Frequency and characteristics of dream threats in frequent nightmare dreamers. Dreaming, 29(4), 310–322. https://doi-org.dml.regis.edu/10.1037/drm0000115
Hey Jimisha, I absolutely loved this blog post. It is very reassuring to know that I am not the only one who suffers from exam nightmares the night before. My dream usually consists of being in the middle of the exam and not understanding the question or not knowing what to do and then waking up in a panic. It's reassuring to know that anxiety the night before might lead to a better performance on the exam. This made me wonder, how much anxiety is beneficial? After doing some research it seems that some anxiety does lead to better performance. It allows us to release some of the strong emotions we are feeling. However, if we experience overwhelming anxiety to the point where it is difficult to function, then that may hinder your overall performance. Essentially it's ok to be nervous about an exam, just don't let those emotions take over. It's important to be confident in your abilities and acknowledge that it's ok if you don't know everything. I will definitely keep this in mind as finals season approaches.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ritual-and-the-brain/201709/anxiety-makes-us-perform-better
https://hbr.org/2014/01/the-relationship-between-anxiety-and-performance