Differences in Emotional Content, Dream Awareness, and Dream Control Between Lucid Dreams and Out-of-Body Experiences: Report Analyses

Abstract

This study compares non-lucid dreams, lucid dreams, and sleep-paralysis-induced out-of-body experiences using dream reports collected over two months. Automatic lexicon-based analysis and manual content scoring are used to characterize emotions, awareness, control, sensations, activities, and references to the body and space. Out-of-body-experience reports contain more negative emotional content and show stronger signals related to agency, insight, dream control, sensations, prospective-memory references, spatial and bodily content, and movement difficulties than lucid dreams. These differences support treating sleep-paralysis-induced out-of-body experiences as a distinct class of experience rather than simply another form of lucid dreaming.

Publication
_Dreaming, 35(S1), pp. S145-S160, https://doi.org/10.1037/drm0000283_