Differences in emotional content, dream awareness, and dream control between lucid dreams and out-of-body experiences: Report analyses.

Abstract

Lucid dreams (LDs) and out-of-body experiences (OBEs) initiated from sleepparalysis both involve heightened cognitive abilities during sleep. Some researchers suggest that OBEs, specifically originating from sleep paralysis, are closely related to LDs or even considered variations of the same phenomenon. Our study compared non-LDs, LDs, and sleep paralysis-induced OBEs from 60 participants over 2 months (916 dream reports). We used Lexicons like National Research Council Canada Emotion Lexicon and Empath, along with Hall and Van de Castle’s scoring system (Domhoff, 1996) with variations and additional measures. The results showed that OBE were characterized by higher occurrences of negative emotions compared to both lucid and non-LDs as measured by automatic and manual scoring systems. Also, more OBE reports contained words related to agency and insight; higher manual scoring of dream control-related expressions; and more total sensations, dream activities, reference to prospective memory evocations, spatial and body references, and more difficulties with movement within the dream environment, than LDs. The findings support the idea that sleep paralysis-induced OBEs represent unique experiences distinguished from LDs.