SUPPRESSION OF THE EMOTIONAL STROOP EFFECT BY INCREASED ANXIETY IN PATIENTS WITH SOCIAL PHOBIA

Anxious individuals are slower at color-naming threat-related than non threat-related words in the emotional Stroop task. Recently, Mathews a nd Sebastian (1993, Cognition and Emotion, 7, 527-530) reported that t his Stroop interference effect disappears when snake-fearful students are exposed to a snake while performing the color-naming task. In the present experiment, we had patients with social phobia and normal cont rol subjects perform an emotional Stroop task under either low anxiety (i.e. upon entering the laboratory) or high anxiety (i.e. before givi ng a speech). Results indicated that Stroop interference for socially threatening words in the phobic group was suppressed under high anxiet y. These findings may indicate that increased effort enables the subje cts to suppress the interference produced in the Stroop task. Copyrigh t (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd