Are Emotional Stroop Tasks Really Emotional?

The Stroop task is the most widely used task for examining executive functioning. A variety of modified Stroop tasks have been created over the years. These tasks use a combination of emotionally charged words and neutral words or Xs. In general, it takes longer to identify the color of the print for emotionally charged words compared to the neutral condition. This finding has been found with suicide-related words for depressed suicide attempters (Becker, Strohbach, & Rinck, 1999) and spider-related words for spider phobics (Thorpe & Salkovskis, 1997) to name a few examples. As a result of these findings, it is currently believed that the color naming interference found in these tasks is related to specific domains of emotion information associated with a clinical patient’s personal concerns (MacLeod, 2005). This study was conducted to determine whether or not Stroop interference can be obtained using information within a specific domain of non-emotional information associated with an individual’s personal interests. Fifty-one controls and 17 volleyball players were shown neutral, color, and volleyball-related words in red, green, yellow, or blue print and asked to name the color print. Participants demonstrated typical Stroop interference with color-congruent and color-incongruent words (F(1, 66)=24.76, p<.001). There were no differences between the controls or volleyball players on color-word Stroop interference. However, there was a significant interaction between the controls and volleyball players and color naming when volleyball-related terms were used (F(1, 66)=4.01, p<.05). There was no difference in color naming between the neutral and volleyball words for the controls but volleyball-related words produced significantly longer RTs for volleyball players compared to neutral words. These findings suggest that Stroop interference can be obtained as long as words are personally relevant. The words do not have to be emotionally charged or related to a clinical disorder to cause interference