Sex Roles

, Volume 33, Issue 7–8, pp 515–530 | Cite as

Dreams of traditional and nontraditional women: Are dream aggression and hostility related to higher levels of waking well-being?

  • Diane Handlin
  • Ross Levin
Article

Abstract

In order to determine whether varying degrees of traditionality would be manifested in specific behaviors that would be present in women's waking and dreaming life, 100 women between the ages of 22 and 79, 12% of whom were African American, were administered a number of self-report measures of psychological well-being and were asked to complete ongoing dream diaries for a 2-week period. These instruments were then scored along with a variety of measures used to determine to what extent traditionality differentiated among the women. Randomly selected dreams from the dream diaries were scored for aggression, anxiety, emotion, hostility, self-efficacious problem-solving, and success/failure. While traditionality was not a significant factor among the self report scales, a number of significant relationships between traditionality and dream content scales were found. As predicted, nontraditionality was positively correlated with a high ratio of achievement-oriented success to failure interactions, self-efficacious problem-solving, and aggressive dream interactions. However, nontraditionality was also significantly correlated with higher overall dream hostility. The results are discussed within the context of recent dream function theory as well as within a broader sociocultural context on shifting gender roles.

Keywords

Significant Relationship Social Psychology Gender Role High Ratio Function Theory 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Plenum Publishing Corporation 1995

Authors and Affiliations

  • Diane Handlin
    • 1
  • Ross Levin
    • 2
  1. 1.University of Medicine and Dentistry of New JerseyUSA
  2. 2.Yeshiva UniversityJudah

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