Contrary to emotional regulation theories of dreaming, dreaming about the 2024 US presidential election was associated with intensified negative affect the next morning, including a more negative outlook on the personal and collective future.
Key Findings
Results
Dreaming about the 2024 US election was associated with intensified negative affect the following morning, contrary to the hypothesis that dreaming would attenuate emotional reactivity.
N = 931 American participants completed an online survey on the day of and the day after the 2024 US presidential election.
Participants rated their feelings about the election, their personal future, and the collective future of the country before and after election night.
The study had hypothesized that dreaming about the election would be associated with reduced negative feelings toward it the following morning.
The observed pattern was described as contrary to emotional regulation theories of dreaming.
Results
Dreaming about the election was associated with a more negative outlook on both personal and collective future the morning after election night.
Participants reported their dreams from election night as part of the follow-day survey.
The negative association extended beyond feelings about the election itself to include participants' outlook on their personal future and the collective future of the country.
This suggests the emotional amplification effect was broad rather than limited to election-specific feelings.
Results
The pattern of intensified negative affect associated with election dreaming was specific to Democrats and Independents, not Republicans.
Dreaming about the election was not associated with overnight changes in affect among Republicans.
Democrats and Independents who dreamed about the election showed amplified negative emotional reactivity the following morning.
This partisan difference likely reflects the differing emotional stakes of the election outcome (a Republican victory) for members of different political groups.
Methods
The study used the 2024 US presidential election as a naturalistic real-life emotional experience to examine the relationship between dreaming and emotional reactivity.
The design involved an online survey administered on two consecutive days: election day and the day after.
The study examined pre-to-post sleep changes in emotional ratings as a function of whether participants reported dreaming about the election.
This naturalistic paradigm contrasts with laboratory studies that use experimentally induced emotional experiences.
Discussion
The findings suggest that sleep and dreaming are associated with amplified emotional reactivity in the short term, contrary to emotional regulation theories of dreaming.
Prior studies had suggested that dreaming may attenuate emotional reactivity overnight, with participants feeling less negative about an experience after dreaming about it.
The authors describe their findings as suggesting 'sleep and dreaming are associated with amplified emotional reactivity, at least in the short-term.'
The authors note this challenges prevailing emotional regulation theories of dreaming.
What This Means
This research suggests that dreaming about a major stressful event — in this case, the 2024 US presidential election — does not help people feel better about it the next morning. Instead, people who dreamed about the election woke up feeling more negatively about it, and also felt more pessimistic about their own future and the future of the country. This finding runs counter to a popular scientific theory that dreaming helps us emotionally process difficult experiences and feel less distressed about them over time.
The effect was not uniform across all participants. Democrats and Independents who dreamed about the election showed this amplified negative emotion the morning after, while Republicans — whose candidate won the election — did not show the same pattern. This suggests the emotional context of the dream matters: when the real-world outcome was distressing to the dreamer, dreaming about it seemed to intensify rather than soothe those feelings, at least in the short term.
This research matters because it challenges long-held assumptions about the emotional function of dreaming and uses a large, real-world event to study how sleep affects our feelings. With 931 participants surveyed across two days, the study provides naturalistic evidence that dreaming about upsetting events may not provide overnight emotional relief, and could even make negative feelings more intense the next day. The authors caution that these findings apply to short-term emotional reactions, and longer-term effects of dreaming on emotional processing remain an open question.
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Livingston W, Putnam A, Wamsley E. (2026). The American dream: Election night dreams predict overnight change in feelings about the election and the future.. PloS one. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0357370