54 Don’t Let A nxiety Run Your Life
face when compared with people who had low or no anxiety.
In a different experiment, people who were highly anxious
were slower at detecting a neutral face among a number of
angry faces (Hansen and Hansen 1988; Byrne and Eysenck
1995; Gilboa- Schechtman, Foa, and Amir 1999; Öhman
and Mineka 2001). Other studies, such as the emotional
Stroop task, required participants to name the color of ink of
various words printed on cards. It sounds easy enough,
right? The catch is, the words were emotionally negative
(“failure,” “collapse,” “stupid,” “death,” and others) and
meant to distract from the central task at hand— simply
naming a color of ink. Highly anxious people were indeed
distracted by the emotionally negative words and displayed
more difficulty in correctly naming the ink color than did
those with low levels of anxiety or no anxiety (Becker et al.
2001; Dresler et al. 2009).
These experiments highlight two important concepts.
First, highly anxious individuals are often, sometimes even
without being aware of it, on “high alert” to detect possible
threats in their environment. Second, anxious individuals
find it hard to focus on a task in the presence of possible
threats (R inck et al. 2003; cf. meta- analysis by Bar- Haim et
al. 2007). Further complicating the matter are the ways in
which individuals judge and respond to the thoughts and
emotions they have about these enhanced perceptions of
threat and increased distractibility. Over time, this process
can potentially lead to chronic and debilitating anxiety.
Practice You may remember that not too long ago, we asked
you to consider a particularly anxiety- provoking event and identif y
the function of your anxiety. With that same event in mind, take
a moment to consider how your attentional biases (your tendency