Intro
John Stroop was an experimental psychologist, best known for developing the Stroop test. In this task, participants are given a list of words, printed in different colors. They are asked to read the color of each word, as opposed to the word itself, and the delay this generally causes is known as the Stroop effect. Stroop’s work opened the door to decades of research into how our brains switch between automatic and deliberate information processing. Stroop was a respected lecturer at David Lipscomb College, where he spent most of his career teaching and researching. Despite his legacy in the field of psychology, Stroop’s primary focus throughout his life was his devout Christian faith. He preached in churches across Tennessee and further afield, and published several books based on his biblical teachings. The Stroop test grew increasingly popular in the 1970s and 1980s, and is still used today in both research and clinical information-processing settings.
