Dream sharing and the enhancement of empathy: Theoretical and applied implication

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9% increase in empathy after dream-sharing between two people

This study looks at how sharing a dream improves a relationship between two people who already know each other. It focuses on the increased empathy we feel towards someone after hearing about their dream.

What did they do?

This scientific paper studied 21 sets of friends sharing dreams with one another in a laboratory environment. The scientists measured empathy levels between the two people before a dream sharing session, and empathy after the session.

• The amount of baseline empathy each person felt for their dream-sharing partner was measured using a questionnaire. It asked questions like “I can relate to what my friend / partner goes through.” Participants rated each question on a 10-point scale. They were assigned an empathy score ranging from 0 to 120.

• One member of the pair was assigned the role of “dream-sharer.” The other member was given the role “dream-listener.” The dream-shared spent around 20 minutes telling the dream-listener about a recent dream. Both members of the pair had a discussion together about what the dream could mean.

• After the session, the scientists made a second measure of how much empathy each person felt for their dream-sharing partner.

What did they find?

The scientists found that after the dream-sharing session, the amount of empathy the dream-listener felt towards the dream-sharer had increased significantly.

Surprisingly, this pattern was only seen for pairs that started the experiment with low levels of empathy for one another. For this group, mean empathy level of the dream-listener increased from 79 to 83. If the partners already felt close, there was little change.

Blagrove, M., Lockheart, J., Carr, M., Basra, S., Graham, H., Lewis, H., Murphy, E., Sakalauskaite, A., Trotman, C., & Valli, K. (2021). Dream sharing and the enhancement of empathy: Theoretical and applied implications. Dreaming, 31(2), 128–139. https://doi.org/10.1037/drm0000165