Emotion Stroop Test
A short unscored practice, then 24 target and 24 comparison scored trials for assessing and tracking attentional bias — including per-phobia word-set variants. Reports reaction time, accuracy, interference, inverse efficiency, and variability as raw within-person performance.
How it works
Choose a word-set variant
The clinician assigns the general negative-vs-neutral or negative-vs-positive version, or a specific phobia variant: spiders, snakes, blood/injection, social threat, heights, enclosed spaces, or flying. Each variant pairs six theme words with six everyday-object words of similar length.
The respondent names ink colours
On every trial a word appears in red, green, blue, or yellow ink. The respondent presses the key for the ink colour as fast as possible — the word's meaning is never the task. Theme and comparison words are intermixed, not blocked.
Read the interference effect
Mean colour-naming time on the theme words minus the comparison words, over correct responses between 200 and 3000 ms, plus an accuracy cost. Slower colour-naming on fear-relevant words indexes automatic attentional capture — the Emotion Stroop effect (Watts et al., 1986; Williams, Mathews, & MacLeod, 1996).
Why phobia word sets
Automatic vigilance
Threat-relevant words draw attention involuntarily — an automatic-vigilance effect (Pratto & John, 1991). For a person with a specific phobia, words from that theme compete for attention even when the task is only to name ink colour, producing measurable slowing (Watts et al., 1986).
Tracking, not diagnosing
No norms, percentiles, or diagnostic cutoffs exist for these word sets, and the report never fabricates any. The interference score is raw and within-person: its clinical use is comparing repeated administrations of the same variant over time — for example across a course of exposure work.
Honest measurement notes
Word lists are constructed in-house following the published phobia-Stroop literature, with theme and comparison words of similar length (Larsen, Mercer, & Balota, 2006, describe why lexical matching matters). One session reflects that session — sleep, caffeine, and distraction all move reaction times.
Common questions
How long does it take?
About 4–5 minutes: eight unscored practice trials with feedback, followed by 48 scored trials with 24 in each condition.
How is it administered?
By a clinician, through a patient link. There is no self-service public version: a clinician assigns the task (choosing the word-set variant) from the battery builder in the clinician portal, and the respondent completes it anonymously from their link. The result, labelled with the variant that was run, appears on the clinician's dashboard and PDF report.
What does the score mean?
The report shows mean reaction time and accuracy for the theme and comparison words, the interference effect (theme minus comparison reaction time, in milliseconds, on correct trials), inverse efficiency, accuracy cost, and reaction-time variability. Positive interference means the theme words slowed colour-naming. Responses outside 200–3000 ms are excluded from means and counted separately. It is raw within-person performance — there is no population norm, percentile, or T-score.
Some of the words are unpleasant — why?
The theme words are what make the task work: the effect exists precisely because emotionally salient content competes for attention. The lists are deliberately mild, and the respondent only ever names ink colours.
Selected literature
Stroop, J. R. (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 18(6), 643–662.
Watts, F. N., McKenna, F. P., Sharrock, R., & Trezise, L. (1986). Colour naming of phobia-related words. British Journal of Psychology, 77(1), 97–108.
Pratto, F., & John, O. P. (1991). Automatic vigilance: The attention-grabbing power of negative social information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61(3), 380–391.
Williams, J. M. G., Mathews, A., & MacLeod, C. (1996). The emotional Stroop task and psychopathology. Psychological Bulletin, 120(1), 3–24.
Larsen, R. J., Mercer, K. A., & Balota, D. A. (2006). Lexical characteristics of words used in emotional Stroop experiments. Emotion, 6(1), 62–72.