This project investigates a classic phenomenon from experimental psychology called the Stroop Effect. This project was completed as part of Udacity's Data Analyst Nanodegree certification.
Stroop’s innovation was to show, clearly and definitively, that our embedded knowledge about our environment impacts how we interact with it. His research method is now one of the most famous and well-known examples of a psychological test, and is elegant in its simplicity.
First, the participant reads a list of words for colors, but the words are printed in a color different to the word itself. For example, the word “orange” would be listed as text, but printed in green. The participant’s reading time of the words on the list is then recorded. Next, the participant has to repeat the test with a new list of words, but should name the colors that the words are printed in. So, when the word “orange” is printed in green, the participant should say “green” and move on to the next word.
In most cases, it takes longer to state the colors of the words, rather than to read the text they are printed in, despite the incongruence being essentially the same across both lists (i.e. both show words in the wrong color). It appears we are more influenced by the physical text than than the text color.
For more, see: The Stroop Effect – How it Works and Why
Based on provided sample of read times, statistical tests were conducted indicating that there is a difference in the average times between congruent and incongruent tests.
- Bootstrapping sampling distribution
- Confidence intervals
- Hypothesis testing, P-value
- Python, Pandas, Numpy, Matplotlib
- Jupyter Notebook
Analyzing the Stroop Effect notebook