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Suppression of the emotional Stroop effect by increased anxiety in patients with social phobia
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Suppression of the emotional Stroop effect by increased anxiety in patients with social phobia

Nader Amir, Richard J. Mcnally, Bradley C. Riemann, James Burns, Marleen Lorenz, John T. Mullen and Jessica I Burns
Behaviour research and therapy, v 34(11), pp 945-948
1996
PMID: 8990547

Abstract

Anxious individuals are slower at color-naming threat-related than nonthreat-related words in the emotional Stroop task. Recently, Mathews and Sebastian (1993, Cognition and Emotion, 7, 527–530) reported that this 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 control subjects perform an emotional Stroop task under either low anxiety (i.e. upon entering the laboratory) or high anxiety (i.e. before giving a speech). Results indicated that Stroop interference for socially threatening words in the phobic group was suppressed under high anxiety. These findings may indicate that increased effort enables the subjects to suppress the interference produced in the Stroop task.

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Psychology, Clinical
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