Hot or Cold Stroop Experiment

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The Chilling Effects of Hot or Cold Images Paired With Their Opposite Stereotypical Color Abstract Being able to identify temperatures with colors is something that almost everyone in the United States, and perhaps around the world, can identify with. The faucets on sinks are often represented with either a red marking or a blue marking for hot and cold, a thermometer will sometimes be represented with red for hot or blue for cold, etc. Even if a small child was asked what color “cold” is they would probably reply blue. From a young age the idea of temperatures with colors surrounds us and is embedded in us. We hypothesized that it would be harder for the brain to identify the temperature of a well-known item if the color of the item was opposite of what it stereotypically would be. We tested this hypothesis by designing a variation of the Stroop task which included an even set of hot pictures and cold pictures, some their normal color and some tented the opposite color. We interpreted our results as evidence that blue fire or red ice is harder for the brain to process than red fire or blue ice because of what people grow up thinking and seeing constantly. Future research may illuminate more about this topic, and really dig deeper into how much colors play a role in our everyday lives. The Chilling Effects of Hot or Cold Images Paired With Their Opposite Stereotypical Color We have many senses that are vital to our existence in this world. One of our many senses deals with detecting temperature of objects and the temperature of the environment around us. This sometimes goes hand in hand with color recognition or the difference between hot objects (red) or cold objects (blue). The area of our brain that detects colors is located in the

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