The Relationship between Nightmare Experience and Athletes’ Personality Traits and Anxiety

Youteng Gan, Ruohang Wang, Jiangang Li, Xueyu Wang and Hongying Fan ()
Additional contact information
Youteng Gan: School of Psychology, Beijing Sport University, Beijing 100084, China
Ruohang Wang: School of Psychology, Beijing Sport University, Beijing 100084, China
Jiangang Li: School of Psychology, Beijing Sport University, Beijing 100084, China
Xueyu Wang: School of Psychology, Beijing Sport University, Beijing 100084, China
Hongying Fan: School of Psychology, Beijing Sport University, Beijing 100084, China

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 19, 1-12

Abstract: Objective: Frequent nightmare behavior or deep nightmare experiences may harm the physical and mental health and performance of athletes. This study explores the nightmare experiences of athletes, and includes non-athletes with similar experiences for comparison. Methods: The Nightmare Experience Questionnaire (NEQ); Zuckerman–Kuhlman–Aluja Personality Questionnaire, Shortened Form (ZKA-PQ/SF); and Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) were used. The subjects were 187 athletes (mean age = 20.44 years, SD = 0.85; 91 females, 96 males) and 90 non-athletes (mean age = 20.34 years, SD = 1.65; 52 females, 38 males) who reported having nightmares. Results: A total of 87 athletes (46.5%) reported having nightmare experiences. The athlete nightmare group scored significantly higher in neuroticism than the non-nightmare group, and their anxiety scores were significantly higher than those of non-athletes, who scored higher in aggressiveness, neuroticism, and sensation seeking. Moreover, anxiety, neuroticism, and sensation seeking positively predicted athletes’ nightmare experiences. Conclusions: Personality traits and anxiety levels can be effectively applied to predict athletes’ nightmare experiences.

Keywords: negative dreams; NEQ; ZKA-PQ/SF; SAS; stimulating experience (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/19/12900/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/19/12900/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:19:p:12900-:d:936554

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().