I've been surveying random people about what their dreams were like and it seems they differ in many different ways: The content of dreams, frequency of nightmares, vividness, recurring themes and frequency of dream recall are some factors that vary between individuals. There's probably a connection between those factors and personality, so I'm making this thread to find some patterns.
Here's a few questions for you to answer (I'll start answering myself):
How often do you recall your dreams? Do you recall multiple different dreams each night?
I know I dream every night, but I recall my dream's contents 1-3 times a week. Occasionally I experience light sleep which wakes me up every now and then over a single night and I can recall 5+ distinct dreams but it doesn't happen often.
How vivid are your dreams? Can you recognize landscapes, faces, etc., or do you get the "feel" for a place and recognize it without explicitly seeing it?
My dreams aren't very vivid, I usually don't recognize the places they take in and I can't see distinct faces but I can tell when I'm with a stranger or someone I know. Some places and people seem "randomly generated", as if they're a combination of places or people I've seen before. It sounds a bit strange, but eating cheese during the afternoon/at night induces more vivid dreams when I sleep (try it out!).
Do you experience emotions in your dreams? Which emotions do you experience?
I hardly ever feel any kind of emotions in my dreams. This is apparently pretty rare, most people seem to experience negative emotions like fear or sadness in the first place, and then pleasure or happiness (or at least they recall the negatives more often). Sometimes I dream about pleasant things and I laugh when I wake up and realize it wasn't real. I can't recall a single dream I've had lately where I felt upset or anything.
Is there any recurring elements in your dreams, things that you often dream about (either physical or symbolic)?
I dream a lot about hotels or large buildings I've never been to. I only have a vague idea of what I'm doing there, it's like I'm wandering around and trying to find something or someone. I dream about airports every now and then, and I have a few water-related dreams, being under the sea and being able to breathe underwater, visiting beaches or aquariums, etc. Sometimes I dream about the different schools I went to when I was younger. On occasion I see domestic animals, especially dogs and cats (I like both). All my dreams have some kind of "movement", I'm always walking/running/swimming as the landscape and elements change. If I play some video game for 12+ hours in a single day, or 6+ hours a day over a few days, I dream about the game, usually that I'm inside the game and moving around as one of the characters (last time it was Monster Hunter World, and it was awesome ).
How often do you have nightmares? What elements show up most often in your nightmares?
I don't remember any nightmares I've had in the past 5 years or so... which is pretty rare. I almost never get "scary" things or the kinds of thing that show up in nightmares, and when I do I don't feel anything at all. I remember a nightmare I had when I was 12 or 13 where I watched a man's disjointed head getting shredded (or something like that) on a television program I was watching, and another dream about being chased inside a house, then I realized I was in a dream so I tried to pass through a wall by jumping into it, and when I did, it turned out to be solid and I woke up so that my pursuer wouldn't catch me (I wasn't able to bend the laws that apply to reality even though it was my own dream, pretty surreal when I think about it).
Do you ever experience violence or taboo elements in dreams? (Feel free to leave blank, the reason I ask this is that some people confessed to me that they did taboo things in their dreams that they would never do in real life, which is sort of interesting because it may indicate some kind of inner desire that they couldn't fulfill in their waking hours)
I haven't experienced any kind of violence dreams in the past few years, but occasionally I dream about sex with random women, though I think that's something that most men dream about and that it's a natural phenomenon and not something accidental because of personality types. A guy I know who's really nice to everyone told me he sometimes dreams of killing the people he doesn't like, although he wouldn't harm a fly in real life.
Anything else you'd like to add about your dreams?
My dreams are less like movies and more like short glimpses of things that happen in logical order. I have more of a passive role in my dreams; I rarely interact with people and the environment, but I'm always moving and trying to get somewhere. I sometimes have conversations, but I can't recall much about them and they don't make much sense. A few years ago I would never talk in my dreams, lately I've been having some conversations with random people or people I know. My dreams are very logical, and (for the most part) follow the laws that apply to reality quite strictly. Sometimes I teleport from one "scene" to another or breathe underwater, but I can never fly/go through solids/travel through time/etc. like some others can do. Also, I find it funny that I dream a lot about buildings and artificial (as opposed to natural) things, even though natural elements seem to have more prevalence in people's dreams (consider that even some animals can dream, if it's a process that has been going on for millions of years then it makes sense for nature-related dreams to be more common, though of course, they adapt to the context of the individual).