John Ridley Stroop
John Ridley Stroop (born March 21, 1897 in Murfreesboro , Tennessee , † September 1, 1973 , buried in Nashville , Tennessee) was an American psychologist .
John Ridley Stroop is best known today for the Stroop effect named after him . With a sophisticated, relatively simple experimental set-up, he was able to impressively demonstrate interference effects in the attention. Far less known is that Stroop was strongly committed to the Church and saw religion as his real calling.
Life
Stroop was born in rural Hall's Hill, Rutherford County, near Murfreesboro , Tennessee , in 1897, the second youngest of six children . He grew up sheltered and hardly had to do any heavy physical work on the family farm, as he was initially not given a high life expectancy. He attended Kitrell County School and graduated as one of the best in his year. Stroop graduated from David Lipscomb High School in 1919 and received a diploma from David Lipscomb Junior College in 1921.
On December 23, 1921, he married Zelma Dunn, with whom he had three children (all sons) over the next seven years. In order to earn a living and build a house during this time, he taught at David Lipscomb College , worked as a janitor and librarian, and also taught at high school in addition to his university education .
Stroop received his university education from George Peabody College in Nashville . In 1924 he received a B.Sc. and awarded an MA in 1925 . In the 1920s he took on various teaching activities. Stroop's research took place at the Jesup Psychological Laboratory under the supervision of Professor Joseph Peterson. He received his doctorate in 1933 and the corresponding publication appeared two years later. He then went back to David Lipscomb College and was Chair of the Psychology Department from 1948 to 1964. He retired in 1967, but continued to teach as Emeritus Professor of Biblical Studies at David Lipscomb College until his death in 1973. In addition to his influential 1935 article, he published only three other scientific articles in the field of experimental psychology.
For Stroop, religion had a special meaning in his life. He preached every Sunday and taught Bible classes during his time at David Lipscomb College. Seven books emerged from his Bible teachings, the trilogy God's Plan and Me being the main work. From then on, his books were used in a variety of ways. B. in Bible teaching in Christian schools and in the training of teachers.
The Stroop Effect
→ Main article Stroop effect
In a series of experiments, Stroop examined interference effects in verbal material under various conditions. In these experiments, the test subjects had the task of (1) reading words printed in black, (2) reading words printed in color, (3) naming different colors presented in the form of squares or crosses, and (4) the color , in which a non-matching color word is written, ignoring the respective word content. The fourth condition is the relevant one. Due to the mismatch between the color word and its color to be named, this condition results in an answer conflict between the word content that is actually ignored and the name of the color. One speaks here of the so-called Stroop (interference) effect . The naming time of the color increases significantly and the errors in naming also increase, that is, instead of the color, the word read is named. In order to be able to successfully fulfill the cognitive task of naming, the test subject must consciously suppress the automatically running (not consciously controlled) process of reading while working on the required task while making use of attention resources. This takes time when naming the color.
This effect has been replicated many times since then (in over 700 publications) and is still one of the most robust effects in cognitive psychology today. Various modifications of this test procedure (e.g. with images, with sounds) have been described.
Importance of his work
At the time of publication, Stroop's article had little impact on science, presumably because it appeared in the age of behaviorism . Stroop himself did not research any further in this area, although initially it was planned to continue the research on his dissertation. However, this was no longer realized after his doctoral supervisor Joseph Peterson died in 1935. Stroop himself became increasingly concerned with religion and withdrew from experimental psychology.
It was not until the 1960s, with the advent of information processing as the dominant perspective in cognitive psychology , that Stroop's work was rediscovered. Due to the simplicity of the test and the idea of automatic processes in information processing that run at different speeds, the test became the subject of intensive research and had a lasting influence on cognitive psychology. The Stroop test is now part of every basic psychology book and is taught to students in the undergraduate studies in psychology. The test is often used in the clinical area (e.g. neurology , psychiatry ) in order to assess the susceptibility of certain groups of people to interference.
John Ridley Stroop was hardly aware of the influence of his test in later years, nor did he care anymore. So he wrote to the psychologist Arthur Jensen , after he had sent him a review article on the Stroop test, the following laconic remark on a card: “Glad to know others have found the test useful. JR Stroop ”.
literature
- CM MacLeod: John Ridley Stroop: Creator of a landmark cognitive task . In: Canadian Psychology . Volume 32, 1991, pp. 521-524.
Individual evidence
- ^ A b C. M. MacLeod: John Ridley Stroop. Creator of a landmark cognitive task . In: Canadian Psychology . Volume 32, 1991, pp. 521-524.
- ^ CM MacLeod: Half a century of research on the Stroop effect. An integrative review . In: Psychological Bulletin . Volume 109, 1991, pp. 163-203.
- ↑ AR Jensen: Citation Classic - The Stroop Color-Word Test - A Review (PDF file; 89 kB). In: Current Contents / Social & Behavioral Sciences . Volume 39, 1981, p. 20.
Web links
- Biography John Ridley Stroop
- Demonstration of the Stroop effect
- short biography with photos of his grave
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Stroop, John Ridley |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American psychologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 21, 1897 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Murfreesboro , Tennessee |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 1, 1973 |