The influence of happiness and anxiety on emotional Stroop effect

Abstract

The emotional Stroop effect is defined as a delay in reaction time or an increase in error rate while naming the color of emotional words compared to neutral words. The aim of this study was to examine how happiness and anxiety influence the emotional Stroop effect. According to the principle of emotion congruence, information processing is facilitated when its emotional valence matches the individual's mood. In the context of the emotional Stroop task, this implies that emotionally congruent words should be processed more easily, leading to a reduction or even elimination of the emotional Stroop effect. Conversely, processing incongruent stimuli should be more challenging and the impact of word meaning on color naming should be more pronounced. Based on these considerations, the hypothesis was proposed that emotional Stroop effect would be stronger when using stimuli incongruent with the participant's emotional state. We administered the emotional Stroop task with neutral, happy, and threatening words, music for mood induction, and the EmoS-15 questionnaire to assess mood induction effectiveness. The hypothesis was partially confirmed, as the emotional Stroop effect, assessed by error rates, was greater for stimuli incongruent with the emotional state.