COVID-19 on MIND

This project investigates how the COVID-19 pandemic affected dreaming, mind-wandering and well- and ill-being.

Data was collected in 2020 in three countries, Finland (in collaboration with Ville Loukola, Jarno Tuominen, and Antti Revonsuo, University of Turku), Australia (in collaboration with Jennifer Windt, Monash University, Melbourne), and UK (in collaboration with Valdas Noreika, Queen Mary of London University, and Tristan Bekinschtein, Cambridge University).

Dream Diary

Participants from various countries filled in an extensive well-being questionnaire and kept a dream diary, as well as a mind-wandering log, for 14 days, with daily assessments of, for example, emotions and COVID-19 worry. We investigate various correlations between well- and ill-being, dreams and mind-wandering, such as how the pandemic affected the affective content and threatening content of dreams, which trait and state variables predict more negative dreaming and mind-wandering, and how the use of emotional words in the dream and mind-wandering reports are correlated with well- and il-being measures.

Two PhD candidates, Ville Loukola and Nanna Strid (University of Turku, Finland), utilize data collected in this project as part of their PhD theses.