EXAMINATION OF THE RELATIONSHIPS AMONG THREE CONTENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS: DREAMS, ATTRIBUTIONS, AND MOODS
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to determine the degree to which morning moods were attributed to dreams or causes in the waking state. Such an investigation could present evidence for relationships between a division of consciousness, represented by dreams, and waking consciousness, represented by attributions and moods. The sampling procedure was to select volunteers from four classes of graduate education students at a large urban university. The sample consisted of 25 females and 25 males who were between 20 and 53 years of age. The mean age was 34.82. Subjects were asked to participate in a mood study which required them to anonymously complete a mood scale and an attribution questionnaire concerning the dominant cause of their mood each morning upon awakening for 28 consecutive days. The mood scale, adapted from Wessman and Ricks' Personal Feeling Scales, was composed of 10, 9-point bipolar continua. The attribution questionnaire instructed subjects to select the most influential cause of their current mood from 10 possible causes. The results indicated that over time, some subjects occasionally evaluated dreams as influential on their morning moods and a few subjects frequently evaluated dreams as influential on their moods. The attribution data of 50 subjects illustrated that 13 subjects--10 females and 3 males--attributed their moods to dreams on just one or two mornings, five subjects attributed their moods to dreams on three to six mornings, and only two subjects attributed their moods to dreams on seven to 10 mornings. The dream ratings of 30 subjects on dream recall mornings when mood was not attributed to a dream showed that 14 subjects assigned a rating of 5 or 6 on a 7-point scale of perceived influence to at least one dream. Of these 14 subjects, one subject gave a rating of 5 to 12 of 25 dreams and one subject gave a rating of 6 to 5 of 15 dreams. For these subjects on these mornings, there was a relationship between dreams and waking consciousness, represented by attributions and moods. Across subjects and days, only a small proportion of dreams were perceived by subjects as influential on their morning moods. The attribution data showed that on mornings of dream recall, dreams ranked fourth across 50 subjects as the "most influential" perceived cause of morning mood; on these mornings 11% of 50 subjects' attributions of morning mood were to dreams. The dream ratings of 30 subjects illustrated that 26% of all recalled dreams that were not attributed by subjects as the dominant cause of their morning moods were rated 5, 6, and 7 on a 7-point scale of perceived influence. Thus, there was a relationship between these dreams and waking consciousness, represented by attributions and moods. The results of a multiple regression analysis, which employed the mood and attribution data of the 20 subjects who attributed at least one morning mood to a dream, demonstrated that the mean mood scores of these subjects could not be predicted by knowledge of their attributions to dreams or other causes. Hence, a fourth attribution dimension--divisions of consciousness--would not contribute to the predictive efficiency of Weiner's three-dimension attribution model. It is recommended that future research (a) evaluate whether the relationships between a division of consciousness and waking consciousness differ for males and females, (b) determine if there is a personality type that is receptive to divisions of consciousness, and (c) assess the implications of relationships between a division of consciousness and waking consciousness for motivation and learning, which would suggest that divisions of consciousness can influence the educational process.
Subject Area
Psychology
Recommended Citation
WASSERMAN, ILENE, "EXAMINATION OF THE RELATIONSHIPS AMONG THREE CONTENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS: DREAMS, ATTRIBUTIONS, AND MOODS" (1981). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI8120080.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI8120080
