Negative selectivity effects and emotional selectivity effects in anxiety: Differential attentional correlates of state and trait variables

There is debate concerning whether anxiety-linked attentional bias represents selective processing of emotional stimuli in general (emotional selectivity), or of negative material specifically (negative selectivity). We hypothesised that emotional selectivity is mediated exclusively by state anxiety, while negative selectivity is interactively mediated by both state and trait anxiety. Negative, positive, and neutral words were presented in an emotional Stroop task to high and low trait anxious students on occasions of low and high state anxiety. With elevations in state anxiety: (1) all participants showed emotional selectivity (greater interference from emotional vs. control words); and (2) high trait anxious, relative to low trait anxious, participants showed negative selectivity (greater interference from negative vs. positive words), supporting our hypothesis.