Emotional Stroop
Text Variant
What is this?
A modified Stroop using emotional versus neutral words. Emotional words (like "death", "fear") cause attentional capture, slowing color naming compared to neutral words. This variant is widely used in clinical research to study how emotional content hijacks our attention.
What does it measure?
Attentional bias toward emotional content. The Emotional Stroop is clinically used to assess anxiety, PTSD, and depression. Greater slowing for emotional words indicates heightened attentional capture by emotionally salient stimuli, which can reveal underlying cognitive vulnerabilities.
How it works
- 1Words are either emotionally charged (grief, anger, death) or neutral (chair, clock, lamp).
- 2All words are displayed in random colors.
- 3Name the INK COLOR of each word as quickly as possible.
- 4Try to ignore the meaning of the words — easier said than done with emotional content.
Fun fact
People with anxiety disorders show significantly larger interference for threat-related words compared to healthy controls. This makes the Emotional Stroop a valuable diagnostic tool — the pattern of which words slow you down can reveal specific emotional sensitivities.