Hypomania, anxiety and the emotional Stroop

Bentall & Thompson (1990) selected participants on the basis of high, medium and low scores on the Hypomanic Personality Scale. In an emotional Stroop test, the high hypomanic participants showed interference of colour naming for depression-related but not euphoria-related words. The current study tests the hypothesis that the effects found were mediated by anxiety, and not hypomania as claimed. Bentall & Thompson's study was repeated but measures of state of trait anxiety were also taken. When analysis was restricted to three subgroups selected in the same manner as in Bentall & Thompson's (1990) study, the findings were very similar to those found in that study and the hypomania-related interference effects were found to occur even when anxiety levels were taken into account. Further analyses of data from the full sample of participants supported the idea that hypomanic personality might reflect a partially successful means of coping with depressive tendencies.