Viewing images of snakes accelerates making judgements of their colour in humans: red snake effect as an instance of 'emotional Stroop facilitation'.

Masahiro Shibasaki,Tomoko Isomura,Nobuo Masataka

doi:10.1098/rsos.140066

Abstract

One of the most prevalent current psychobiological notions about human behaviour and emotion suggests that prioritization of threatening stimuli processing induces deleterious effects on task performance. In order to confirm its relevancy, 108 adults and 25 children were required to name the colour of images of snakes and flowers, using the pictorial emotional Stroop paradigm. When reaction time to answer the colour of each stimulus was measured, its value was found to decrease when snake images were presented when compared with when flower images were presented. Thus, contrary to the expectation from previous emotional Stroop paradigm research, emotions evoked by viewing images of snakes as a biologically relevant threatening stimulus were found to be likely to exert a facilitating rather than interfering effect on making judgements of their colour.

Highlights

There have been increasing reports about influences exerted by emotion upon behaviour
The manner by which processing emotional visual stimuli produces these effects is of great interest
The results indicate the fact that emotion evoked by the images of snakes exerts a facilitating effect upon making judgements of their colour

Summary

Introduction

There have been increasing reports about influences exerted by emotion upon behaviour. The manner by which processing emotional visual stimuli produces these effects is of great interest. Perhaps the most typical experimental testing of this notion has been performed using the emotional Stroop paradigm developed by psychopathologists [3,4,5]. In this paradigm, phobic participants are asked to make judgements of the colour of presented textual.

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion