Did you know that, the American experimental psychologist John Ridley Stroop, well known for developing the Stroop Test in 1935 (Stroop, 1935), studied the way in which some interferences reveal themselves in the moment in which we have already established a given association with a certain thing, and then, we have to associate it with something else.
This causes the interference.
For example, if we know that the word YELLOW is therefore YELLOW, when we are presented with something like YELLOW, the interference appears. This is known as the Stroop Effect (Ruhl, 2025).
Bence Nanay (2024) argues that the Stroop Effect is not only related to motor control but also to the interferences in perceptual processing. For example, as Nanay suggests, “reading the color word triggers-laterally and automatically-visual imagery of the color and interferes with the processing of the perceived color of the word” (Nanay, 2024).
This is very interesting as most of us are used to things ‘the way they are’. These types of experiments allow us to start seeing the world in a different way as we recognise that what we perceive from the world is just a small portion of what is truly happening ‘out there’.
When we open our perception to new possibilities, we recognise that reality as we perceive it, is constantly being modified by the observer.
Try the following:
Read the following words out loud while ignoring the word that is written, and instead, focus on the colour of the word. See what happens!
RED
GREEN
BLUE
PURPLE
ORANGE
YELLOW
What did you experiment?
Try it again…
PURPLE
GREEN
RED
BLUE
YELLOW
ORANGE
What you experimented here is related to something called ‘interference’. As MacLeod (2015) explains, “because words are read faster than colors can be named, interference results when the task is to name the colors and ignore the words” (MacLeod, 2015).
This interference is experimented because the colours and the words appear to be ‘incompatible’.
This happens in many ways in our daily life, when we ‘are used to seeing the world in a specific way’ and when we are invited, or sometimes even forced to see it in ‘another way’, there is some level of resistance inside of us, which wants to keep us in that comfortable and in many times, uncomfortable place where things ‘make sense’ to us, even if we don’t like it.
The invitation here, is to continue being open to new possibilities of perception and of being in the world, where we can be more and more amazed everyday by the world around us, by ourselves, and the magnificence of the universe. Recognising that we are a reflection of one another and part of the same whole.
Where eventually, all possibilities can coexist, even those we haven’t imagined yet.
References
MacLeod, C. M. (2015). The Stroop effect. In Encyclopedia of color science and technology (pp. 1-3). Springer. https://sites.socsci.uci.edu/~kjameson/ECST/MacLeod_TheStroopEffect.pdf
Maitland, L. (2011). Sensation and Perception a unit lesson plan for high school psychology teachers. Teachers of Psychology in Secondary Schools (TOPSS). American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/topss/lessons/sensation.pdf
Nanay, B. (2024). The Stroop effect and mental imagery. Perception, 53(1), 61–67. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/375548184_The_Stroop_effect_and_mental_imagery
Ruhl, C. (2025). Stroop effect. Verywell Mind. https://www.simplypsychology.org/stroop-effect.html
Stroop, J. R. (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 18(6), 643–662. Classics in the History of Psychology. An internet resource developed by Christopher D. Green York University, Toronto, Ontario. https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Stroop/?c=012
