D-02 · Executive Control
The lock is the same. The words are not. Feel emotionally charged language reach into a task it has nothing to do with.
Experimental design
Within-subjects; emotional Stroop variant
Attentional bias
Preferential processing of threat- or concern-relevant stimuli
Emotional Stroop
Slowed color naming for emotionally salient words unrelated to the ink color
Attentional capture
Involuntary orienting to significant stimuli, distinct from response conflict
Threat hypervigilance
Faster detection or slower disengagement from threat cues in anxious individuals.
Amygdala
Subcortical structure that flags affective significance and modulates early attention.
Cognitive avoidance
Strategy of diverting attention from emotional material; can reduce interference.
Difficulty
AdvancedEstimated time
10 minutes
Paradigm
Emotional attention capture
First published
1986
Emotionally significant stimuli get priority access to attention even when they are completely task-irrelevant. Threat and arousal words slow color naming more than neutral words, your evaluation system screens everything, always.
The emotional Stroop task adapts Stroop's logic: participants name ink colors of neutral versus emotionally charged words. Across hundreds of studies, charged words, especially those matching a person's current concerns, produce slower color naming. Unlike the classic effect, the interference is not response conflict but attentional capture: the amygdala-driven significance system flags the word's meaning and holds attention for a beat. The paradigm became a workhorse of clinical research on anxiety, phobia, and PTSD.
MacLeod, C., Mathews, A., & Tata, P. (1986). Attentional bias in emotional disorders. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95(1), 15–20.