When life is but a dream: Does transliminality predict continuity of thought across the sleep-wake cycle?

People with fantasy proneness and dispositions towards absorption and hypnotizability encounter waking thoughts that are particularly bizarre or dreamlike in nature. This suggests not only a continuity between dreaming and waking thoughts—what we refer to as continuity of thought—but perhaps stable individual differences in continuity of thought. The personality trait transliminality, which has been linked with increased awareness of subliminally-presented material, may underlie these dispositions and thus shows unique promise for predicting continuity of thought. In a sample of undergraduate students, we measured transliminality using the Revised Transliminality Scale (RTS) and then used experience sampling to capture the phenomenological qualities of dreaming and waking thoughts for one week. We examined evidence for continuity of thought across the sleep-wake cycle, examined the connection between transliminality and dreamlike thoughts in wakefulness, and assessed whether transliminality predicts greater overall continuity of thought. Results showed transliminality was unrelated to overall continuity of thought, however further exploratory analyses showed transliminality predicted greater continuity in bizarreness of thought—though this effect did not hold up after controlling for multiple comparisons. Moreover, transliminality was positively associated with waking thoughts that were more bizarre, interesting and novel. Overall, this work advances understanding on how personality may relate to phenomenology of thought, and opens the door for future research to assess how these personality-phenomenology relations may impact wellbeing, creativity, or behavior more generally.