Loneliness increases attention to negative vocal tone in an auditory Stroop task

Lonely individuals are sensitive to negative social information. Past evidence for this finding comes mostly from research on visual cues (e.g., facial expression); less is known whether a parallel pattern occurs for auditory cues (e.g., voice). Using a vocal emotional Stroop task, we examined whether loneliness heightens attention to other's vocal tone. Compared to less lonely individuals, lonely participants' reaction time during the Stroop task was significantly slower when a positive (vs. negative) semantic word was presented via a negative vocal tone. It appears that lonely individuals, compared to others, are more distracted by the negative emotionality of a voice tone, which might signal social threats. This attentional bias remained when controlling for neuroticism, and was more pronounced when social, rather than nonsocial words were presented.