The Stroop Effect On The Brain

You're probably thinking, “What even is the ‘Stroop Effect’”? Well, the Stroop effect is classified as how our minds work in telling the difference between naming color words, and naming the word’s colors. It was discovered by John Ridley Stroop (Stroop, J.R.) in 1935. And it studies the the interference in verbal reactions. Many people wonder why this still fascinates psychologists. Part of the answer is the effect taps into the essential operations of cognition, which helps us figure out how the brain works. In order to counter this effect, you must have good eyes and a very keen perception. Along with that, you must be very good at being able to focus on a certain thing, and pay attention to detail. If you can't complete these tasks, you …show more content…
It helps us do literally everything. We, as people, would not be able to function without a brain. The decisions we make? The brain is the center of it all. Our brain is split into two systems, according to Daniel Kahneman. The first (system one) is involuntary, the always-on network processes stimuli, and then uses them to their advantage. This system makes automatic movement/decisions like turning our heads when we hear our names, or jumping back when frightened. The second (system two) is, as you guessed, the voluntary system. It processes system one’s suggestions, and (or) is in charge of anything tor difficult for system one, and it will then take power and control over our body and our decisions. When the brain just reads off words without command, it is called the automatic word recognition hypothesis. It is so accepted by scientists and researchers, that in psychology textbooks it is often referred to as the only possible answer to the Stroop Effect. This theory states that reading is process that’s automatic and cannot be shut off. While reading/naming off the words is an automatic task, naming the colors isn’t. Thus, creating the Stroop Effect. And another hypothesis is the Speed of Processing which just suggests that processing the word is much, much faster than being able to process the color of the word. Along with two different systems, and two different hypotheses, might as well keep the train going with two different pathways. There is a strong path and a weak path. Let’s say path one is stronger, so therefore there will be no interference. But if path two is weaker, then there will be interference, which creates the Stroop Effect. All of this happens just inside the