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Emotional Stroop effect — MRCPsych Paper A MCQ

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ModeratePsychologyEmotional Stroop effectMRCPsych Paper A

A patient with an anxiety disorder is shown threat-related and neutral words printed in different ink colours. When instructed to name the ink colour while ignoring each word's meaning, the patient responds more slowly to the threat-related words, despite the word sets being matched for length and frequency. Which cognitive process best explains this finding?

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Correct answer: D — Automatic processing of threat meaning competing with colour naming

The correct answer is D. This is the emotional Stroop effect: the task-irrelevant emotional meaning of threat-related words attracts processing resources and interferes with naming their ink colour. Matching word length and frequency makes a simple lexical explanation less likely. Muller–Lyer-type effects involve contextual distortion of perceived line length, not semantic interference. Social desirability bias affects self-report responses. Operant shaping involves reinforcing successive approximations towards a target behaviour. Prospective memory failure is forgetting to carry out a future intention. None of these alternatives explains selective slowing during colour naming when the ignored word is personally or clinically threatening.

Reference: Mathews A, Klug F. Emotionality and interference with color-naming in anxiety. Behaviour Research and Therapy. 1993;31(1):57–62. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8417729/