Lucid Dreaming, Waking Personality and Cognitive Development

Findings are presented from a comparison of waking personality traits (16PF, Cattell, Eber, & Tatsuoka, 1970 ) characteristic of male and female groups totaling 247 frequent, and 201 infrequent lucid dreamers. Discriminant analyses produced significant findings and similar profiles, for both males and females. Overall, findings are considered suggestive of a strong link between lucid awareness and volition within dreams and the management of waking cognition and emotion. Additionally, support is provided for previously established relationships between lucid dream occurrence and field independence. Results are discussed from a perspective considering the lucid dream phenomenon to be a valuable vantage point from which to explore relationships between dream function and waking cognition. Within this framework, current findings of differences between frequent and infrequent lucid dreamers are postulated to involve variations in the functioning of specific cognitive/developmental processes related to the regulation and discrimination of internally arising subjective aspects of perception.