Emotional Stroop Test
About three minutes. Colour-name a mix of emotion and neutral words; your report shows reaction time and accuracy for each, plus the within-person emotional-interference effect. Free with a registered account.
How it works
Name the ink colour
On every trial a word appears in red, green, blue, or yellow ink. Press the key for the ink colour as fast as you can — ignore what the word says.
Emotion vs neutral words
Half the words name unpleasant feelings; the other half are everyday objects matched for length and familiarity. The two kinds are mixed together, not blocked.
Emotional interference
Your mean colour-naming time on emotion words minus neutral words, in milliseconds. A positive value means emotional content briefly captured your attention — the emotional Stroop effect.
Common questions
How long does it take?
About three minutes. It is one continuous run of short trials with brief instructions beforehand.
Is it free?
Yes — no payment is required. Taking the Emotional Stroop requires a free registered account. Once you have one you can run the task and read your reaction time and accuracy for emotion and neutral words plus your within-person emotional-interference effect (emotion minus neutral reaction time, in milliseconds). This task is reported as your own raw performance — there is no population norm, percentile, or T-score.
What does the emotional Stroop measure?
It indexes how much emotionally salient words slow a simple colour-naming response. Larger slowing on emotion words is interpreted as those words briefly capturing attention. It is descriptive of one session, not a diagnosis.
Some of the words are unpleasant — why?
The emotion words (for example danger, grief) are what make the task work: the effect exists precisely because emotional content competes for attention. The list is deliberately mild. You only ever name the ink colour.