Daydreaming Styles, Emotionality and the Big Five Personality Dimensions

This study examined the relationships between measures of personality (the NEO-FFI), Emotionality (Positive and Negative), and Daydreaming (the Short Imaginal Processes Inventory) to assess hypotheses about private experience, behavioral and affective tendencies. A sample of 103 young adults completed questionnaires and results were analyzed by correlations and principle components factor analysis. As predicted Positive-Constructive Daydreaming was positively correlated with the NEO “Big Five” dimension of Openness, Guilty-Dysphoric Daydreaming loaded with both the NEO Neuroticism scale and the Negative Emotionality measure. Poor Attentional Control of the SIPI was linked negatively with Conscientiousness and Positive Emotionality. Our results further suggest that Extraversion may be primarily social as measured in the NEO while a separate Thinking Introversion-Extraversion dimension in the sense used by Jung and Guilford may be reflected by the personality-daydreaming results we obtained.