Within Block Habituation Determines the Emotional Stroop Effect

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

In the emotional Stoop task, people name the ink color of words. The words come from two categories, emotion items and neutral items. It is typically found that it takes longer to name the ink color of emotion items than that of neutral items, the emotional Stoop effect (ESE). Virtually all studies of the effect used a small set of words in each category that were repeatedly presented. We argue that this design entails a great amount of habituation, thereby compromising the ESE.
Modern life is replete with emotion and stress. Who has avoided the emergency room or (witnessing) a traffic accident? In order to perform efficiently under such stressful situations, it is extremely important to preserve one's composure and focus on the relevant stimuli. Various factors can influence attention and performance, but people habitually exposed to such situations (eg, emergency personnel, medical professionals, police) typically perform better than those hit by these scenes for the first time. In order to mimic real life performance in the laboratory, the emotional Stroop task has been commonly applied. A small set of words is exposed repeatedly for view, and the participant's task is to name, while timed, the ink color in which each word is printed. The basic finding is that it takes people longer to name the ink color of emotional words than that of neutral words, the emotional Stroop effect (ESE). However, is this emotional slowdown dependable? Given the critical role played by habituation in everyday life, the extensive repetition of the same emotion items exposes the responses to experimental habituation. The observed ESE may well be diluted and underestimate the true effect of emotio
Original languageAmerican English
Title of host publicationProceedings of Fechner Day
Pages407-412
Number of pages6
Volume27
Edition1
StatePublished - 2011

Publication series

NameProceedings of Fechner Day
PublisherCiteseer

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