Emotional Stroop with faces: Threatening information diverts unnecessary attention from the main task

Abstract

In this study, we examine whether the involuntary processing of facial expressions is modulated by perceptual load in a go/no-go task and by participants trait anxiety level Fifty-two students selected according to their high vs. low trait anxiety levels carried out a high vs. low perceptual load letter discrimination task, in the presence of distracting angry, neutral or happy faces Results showed that under low perceptual load conditions and with angry faces as distractors, all participants had worse target discrimination (less perceptual sensitivity, as assessed by the d parameter), and stricter response criteria (as indexed by β) Although these emotional Stroop effects were not modulated by trait anxiety, they seem to reflect genuine effects of distraction from threatening information, since they cannot be explained in terms of a general cognitive slowdown in the presence of negative information.