Emotionality and interference with color-naming in anxiety.

The source of interference with color-naming emotional words in clinical anxiety was investigated using word sets that were varied in valence and in their judged relationship to the concerns of anxious patients. Results showed that neither valence nor general emotionality was of critical importance in predicting extent of interference. In contrast, words that were judged to be highly related to likely concerns or relevant threats caused more interference than those which were not, irrespective of their positive or negative valence. These results suggest the need to modify earlier formulations of emotional Stroop effects, and may help to explain the variable results obtained in previous investigations.