EXAMINING INTERFERENCE AND SUPPRESSION EFFECTS FOR SPIDER STIMULI IN THE EMOTIONAL STROOP TASK

The emotional Stroop task is an information processing approach that assesses emotion. College students completed a neutral and a spider-word emotional Stroop task in the presence of a fear stimulus, a disgust stimulus or nostimulus for control participants. Following the Stroop tasks, participants underwent a Behavioral Approach Task with the stimulus present during the Stroop task. Participants were asked to come back for a second session where the Stroop tasks and Behavioral Approach Task was repeated in the presence of the opposite stimulus seen in the first session. Although not statistically significant, the findings of this study suggest that spider phobics take a longer time to color name spider words on the emotional Stroop task than non-phobics in the presence of a disgust stimulus or in the absence of a stimulus. However, they appear to perform about the same as non-phobics in the presence of a feared stimulus.