THURSDAY, June 14 (HealthDay News) -- About 8 percent of both men's and women's dreams contain sexual content, according to research presented at the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies in Minneapolis.
Antonio Zadra, Ph.D., of the University of Montreal in Canada, and colleagues analyzed 3,564 dreams recorded daily during a two- to four-week period by 109 women and 64 men who had a mean age of 29.8 and 30.4 years, respectively.
The researchers found that 41 percent of women and 45 percent of men reported one sexual dream or more; 8.2 percent of all reported dreams were sexual, totaling 292 sexual dreams. Most often featured was sexual intercourse, followed by sexual propositions, kissing and sexual fantasy. Six percent of both genders' sexual dreams involved masturbation and 4 percent involved orgasm.
Negative emotions surfaced in one-fifth of women's and 15 percent of men's sexual dreams. More men's than women's dreams included multiple partners.
"Approxmately 8 percent of everyday dream reports from both men and women contain some form of sexually related activity," the authors write. "Viewed in the context of the continuity hypothesis of dreaming, gender differences in the content of everyday sexual dreams may reflect people's waking needs, experiences, attitudes and concerns with respect to sexuality."
Abstract (#1093; Page 405)
