A new study suggests that people who dream about murder might be more aggressive when awake, according to Live Science, and those who dream about committing the murders tend to be antagonistic, taciturn and do not get along well with others in their waking time lives.
G. William Domhoff, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California, was not involved with the study, and disputes the study's findings.
"Waking questionnaires have nothing to do with what people actually dream about," said Domhoff, according to Live Science.
Michael Schredl, head the study and of research at the Central Institute of Mental Health's sleep laboratory in Mannheim, Germany, said that dreams magnify what occurs in the dreamer's waking hours.
Schredl and his team of researchers surveyed 443 university students in Germany and recorded what kinds of dreams the participants had and the personality traits of the students, according to Live Science. The students told researchers that they could recall about two or three dreams per week and 19 percent of those surveyed said they have had dreams about killing other people. Men had more hostile dreams than women, generally.
Schredl's team discovered that, for example, if you dream about killing someone, "in waking life, you are a little more aggressive," he said, according to Live Science.
Schredl said the link between aggression and murder in dreams in not surprising, but the correlation between introversion and violent dreams was "unexpected," according to Live Science. Schredl surmised that since introverts tend to bottle up emotions, like anger and hostility, they may express those feelings while asleep.
Dissenting Domhoff told Live Science that the study's numbers appeared a bit high. In an email to Live Science, Domhoff cited a previous account of the dreams of 100 men and 100 women. He claims the study found that a mere 3.8 percent of male participant's dreams and 0.6 percent of the female's dreams included a murder.
"If we ask how many dream reports portrayed the dreamer murdering someone, the numbers were even smaller, 1 percent of the dreams for men and 0.2 percent for women," Domhoff told Live Science.
Domhoff also asserted that most people do not recall their dreams very accurately, nor do people tend to give a true description of their own personality, according to Live Science.
Schredl still contends that those dreaming of murder, be it bloody homicide or accidental killing, need to contemplate what is happening in their lives.
"Emotions in dreams can be much stronger than the emotions in waking life," Schredl said, according to Live Science. "If you do dream about killing, look at your aggressive emotions in waking life."
