The Stroop Effect

The stroop effect is originated by psychologist named John Ridley Stroop. He had an interest for conflicting processes. This was the study of interference of serial verbal reactions. J.R. Stroop made two important experiments which changed how people looked at attention and perception. The idea came to J.R. Stroop after a work done by J.M. Catell in 1885. They said that the color of letter took longer to read than the corresponding word. J.R. Stroop was looking for the effect of each dimensions by trying to name another dimension. The first important experiment made from J.R. Stroop was that he looked for people that read the written colors of the words independently with the same color they are reading. The readers were asked to say the color of the letter. This was the first test that he made. Then he made the second experiment, the purpose for this experiment was that if the word said "yellow", and the word was in red, the people tested would normally have read "red" instead of "yellow". This was all timed, J.R. Stroop noticed that people reading the word with the same color is faster than reading the word with a different color. This showed that people read and see at the same time to make it much faster. Stroop also noticed that people that are reading the word with different color takes more time, because they have to think more. They said that people before looking throught the word or color, they can already predict what is the name, it said that they don't even finish reading the word before they say it.

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