Trait anxiety, infrequent emotional conflict, and the emotional face Stroop task

Research shows that anxiety may relate to any or all of the following: goal conflict resolution; distraction, and the automatic detection of threat-related stimuli. To investigate these relationships we used a modified Stroop task where fearful and happy emotional target faces are overlaid with eith...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Personality and individual differences 2017-06, Vol.111, p.157-162
Main Authors: du Rocher, Andrew R., Pickering, Alan D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anxiety
Attention
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
Conflict
Conflict resolution
Distraction
Emotion
Emotional disorders
Emotions
Facial expressions
Information processing
Mental health
Positive emotions
Stroop
Stroop task
Trait anxiety
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Summary:Research shows that anxiety may relate to any or all of the following: goal conflict resolution; distraction, and the automatic detection of threat-related stimuli. To investigate these relationships we used a modified Stroop task where fearful and happy emotional target faces are overlaid with either emotionally neutral, emotionally congruent or emotionally incongruent distracting words. A trait anxiety related speed-accuracy trade-off seemed to primarily reduce accuracy during incongruent trials with target fearful faces overlaid with the emotionally conflicting word happy. We offer an explanation of this effect based upon theories of how positive stimuli and threat-related stimuli differentially affect information processing. Future studies should seek to verify how the anxiety related speed-accuracy trade-off mechanism is activated, and elucidate how and when positive stimuli affect anxiety more than threat-related stimuli do. •Anxiety-related speed-accuracy trade-off•Anxiety related reduction in accuracy for incongruent fearful target face trials•No anxiety related reduction in accuracy for incongruent happy target face trials
ISSN:0191-8869
1873-3549
DOI:10.1016/j.paid.2017.02.017