Colour-naming of dentist-related words: role of coping style, dental anxiety, and trait anxiety

The Stroop colour-naming task requires that subjects name the colour that a word is written in while ignoring the wordʹs content. Previous studies have shown that anxious individuals are slower to colour-name fear-related words. Apparently, anxious individuals are characterized by an attentional vigilance for fear-related stimuli, known as attentional bias. The present study investigated whether individual differences in monitoring (vigilant) and blunting (avoidant) coping styles are related to attentional bias. Forty-five normal, healthy subjects had to colour-name dentist-related words. The results showed that dental anxiety, but not trait anxiety, was related to colour-naming performance: high dental anxious subjects were slower in colour-naming dentist-related words than low dental anxious subjects. Monitoring and blunting coping styles were found to be unrelated to colour-naming performance.