Anxiety and Stroop Performance

Abstract

The study probed the effect of cognitive and emotional Stroop on the performance of students from different levels of anxiety. Anxiety is a normal and healthy reaction to perceived danger that triggers a variety of physical, mental and behavioral changes in order to facilitate a speedy response (WHO, 2004). Again, anxiety has also been found to have an important role to play in situations of cognitive conflict. The Stroop effect has often been widely used for assessing conflict (Stroop, 1935; MacLeod, 1991). In the present study, a mixed sample of 89 students from the Government schools of Chandigarh in the age range of 14-18 years (mean age= 15.9 years) was taken, for the purpose. The repeated measures ANOVA and other analysis of the data brought out performance differences with regard to how different groups of anxiety perform during cognitive and emotional Stroop task situations. The study revealed that anxiety significantly interacts with Stroop performance. Further, high anxiety damages emotional Stroop performance more than it damages the cognitive Stroop performance i.e., high anxiety individuals show more reactive control (Braver, 2012). On the other hand, low and moderate anxiety seems to lead to more errors on cognitive Stroop as compared to the emotional Stroop.