Anxiety Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Anxiety, including details on anxiety disorder, panic attacks, medication, counselling, therapy.

Attentional bias and drinking to cope with social anxiety.

Carrigan MH, Drobes DJ, Randall CL

Department of Psychology, University of South Carolina, Center for Drug and Alcohol Programs, Medican University of South Carolina, Aiken, SC 29801, USA. maureec@usca.edu

This study investigated the sensitivity of the emotional Stroop test for identifying individuals who reported drinking to cope with social fears. Community volunteers completed a modified Stroop task during which social threat, alcohol-related, and control words were presented. High scores on drinking-to-cope measures were hypothesized to be associated with longer response latencies to both social threat and alcohol-related words. Consistent with previous studies, alcohol dependence was correlated with latencies for alcohol-related words, and level of social anxiety was correlated with response latency to social threat words. As expected, drinking-to-cope measures predicted response latency to alcohol-related and social threat words. These results suggest that the emotional Stroop test is useful in studying the relationship between social anxiety and alcohol consumption.

Published 5 January 2005 in Psychol Addict Behav, 18(4): 374-80.
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