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Have you ever woken from a dream where you were driven to kill?

A new study has found those who dream of committing murder tend to be hostile and more aggressive when they are awake, the Daily Mail reports.

Dream experts found they are more likely to be introverted and often don't socialise well with others.

They also discovered those who dream of murder are more open to different experiences in waking life.

The German researchers said dreams are often an amplification of real-life events.

Introverted people may bottle up feelings of hostility and aggression which are then exaggerated in the dreams, lead researcher Professor Michael Shredl, of the Central Institute of Mental Health's sleep laboratory in Mannheim, Germany told LiveScience.
In the study, Professor Shredl and his team analysed the dreams and character traits of 443 German university students.

The students remembered an average of two to three dreams a week.

Around 19 per cent of the students dreamt of killing people.

Men tended to have aggressive dreams more often than women, echoing previous studies carried out by Professor Shredl.

The new study found people who show traits of introversion, low levels of agreeableness and a greater degree of openness tend to dream of murder.

This link was ‘unexpected’, Professor Shredl admitted.

Introverts with less agreeable personalities might keep their emotions, including aggression, bottled up, and then find them exaggerated in their dreams, he said.

People who are open to new experiences may also be more open to their emotions, and recognise them in dreams, he added.

In the future he hopes to ask people about the specific circumstance of the murder in their dreams, such as whether it was an accident, in self-defense, or a cold-blooded act of killing.

Why men and women have different nightmares

Men and women are disturbed by very different torments in their sleep.

Psychologists at the University of Montreal discovered there’s a gender gulf in the dark corners of our unconscious minds.

Men’s nightmares and bad dreams were more likely to feature themes of disaster or calamity such as floods, earthquakes and war.

Men are also far more prone to nightmares about insects, snakes and rats.

Conversely, inter-personal conflicts such as those with a spouse, relative or work colleague were much more frequent in women’s nightmares — and much more rare with men.

The people who appear in bad dreams also vary fundamentally between men and women.

The latter usually have nightmares about people and in settings they know, while many of the scenes and characters in men’s nightmares are completely fictitious.

There are several possible explanations for all this, Professor Antonio Zadra, the study’s co-author and one of the world’s top dream researchers, says.

It could be down to evolution and, for instance, the male’s deeply ingrained role as the protector, always on the lookout for physical threats to his family.

Some experts believe the main reason we dream is to rehearse in our minds how to survive dangerous situations.

Another theory is based on the assumption that all our dreams are rooted in our real-life interests and fears.

In ‘real life’, men and boys like to watch horror films and thrillers, whereas women prefer emotional dramas. And so that’s how it is in the nocturnal drama of our nightmares.