Brain Games & Tests

Stroop Test

Tap the color the word is printed in, not the word itself. Sounds easy. It is not. Score as many as you can in 45 seconds.

Taylor Rupe, B.A. Psychology
By Taylor Rupe, B.A. Psychology, University of Washington (Seattle Campus)
Updated June 23, 2026
Score: 0
Time: 45s
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The most famous experiment in psychology

In 1935, John Ridley Stroop showed that people are much slower to name the ink color of a word when the word spells a different color. Reading is so automatic for literate adults that the written word jumps ahead of the color in your mind, and you have to actively push it down to answer correctly. That tug of war is the Stroop effect, and it has been replicated thousands of times.

What it reveals about your brain

The Stroop task is a window into executive function: the mental control that lets you ignore a distraction and follow the rule you were given. Psychologists and neuropsychologists use Stroop variants to study attention, aging, and conditions that affect cognitive control. It is a great example of how a simple game can measure something genuinely deep about the mind. That overlap of curiosity and measurement is the heart of fields like neuropsychology.

How to score higher

Try softening your focus so you see the color before you read the word. Some people do better squinting slightly so the letters blur. Speed comes with practice as your brain learns to prioritize the rule over the habit, but the interference never fully goes away. That is what makes it such a reliable test.

Stroop Test FAQ

The Stroop effect is the delay and difficulty you feel when the meaning of a word fights with the color it is printed in, like the word RED written in blue ink. Naming the ink color takes longer because reading is so automatic that your brain wants to say the word instead.
It measures selective attention and cognitive control, sometimes called executive function. To do well you have to suppress the automatic urge to read the word and respond to the ink color instead. That act of overriding an automatic response is exactly what the test captures.
John Ridley Stroop described it in 1935. His original study is one of the most cited and most replicated experiments in all of psychology, and the task still appears in research and clinical assessment today.
For literate adults, reading is nearly automatic and very fast. When the word and the ink color conflict, your brain processes the word faster than the color, so it interferes with your answer. Overriding that takes effort, which slows you down and causes mistakes.

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