[playful page] A toy, not a test. It runs in your browser; nothing you do here is sent anywhere, and the only thing kept is a "played" tick in your own browser so the toy shelf can show it.

TOY #1 OF 6 works with a mouse, a finger or a keyboard

ress the button for the colour of the ink. Ignore what the word says. Some words match their ink and some do not; there are 24 in all. Go as fast as you can without guessing.

This toy needs JavaScript. The notes below still say what it would have shown.

What it shows. Naming the ink colour of a colour word is slower when the word names a different colour. J. Ridley Stroop reported this in 1935: people took longer to name the ink colours of conflicting colour words than to name plain colour patches (Stroop, 1935) [paraphrase, not a quotation]. MacLeod's review of fifty years of follow-ups found the interference to be one of the most dependable results in psychology (MacLeod, 1991) [paraphrase, not a quotation]. Reading is so practised that it runs whether you want it to or not. What it cannot show. Stroop timed people reading whole cards aloud. Pressing buttons is a different response, and learning which button is which adds its own delay, especially in the first few trials. Two dozen trials is a small sample, and your browser's timing is only good to a few milliseconds. It is a demonstration of the effect, not a measurement of you.

Sources

1. Stroop (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology. doi:10.1037/h0054651
2. MacLeod (1991). Half a century of research on the Stroop effect: An integrative review. Psychological Bulletin. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.109.2.163

see also

	William James — on habit, which is what the word is doing to you
	Stroop effect — in the glossary
	timeline: psychophysics — where 1935 sits