Javeriana University

Modern Languages
Intermediate english
Enquiry
Presentes to: Consanza Vargas
Presented by: Verónica Rivera Serna
27-09-10

Influence of the suggestion in the effect stroop

Suggestion is a psychological process in which people guides their thoughts,

feelings, or behavior according to what others recommend.

As I am very interested in this process I decided to prove it by my own and for that
I made an experiment in which I could establish the relation between suggestion
and the reading development of a stroop effect paragraph.

Stroop effect is a semantic interference produced by a reading automaticity. This

happens when the meaning of a word interferes with naming the ink color of the
written name of the color. For example ‘blue’.

For my research I studied the results of control and experimental groups (2 men
and 2 women among 18 and 21 years old). First, in both, I entered how much they
lasted and how many mistakes they did reading a stoop effect paragraph. Then, I
told the participants of the experimental group that I was going to give them a
drink that was going to help them improving their results in the development of
the task. Unlike, the controlling group didn’t know this information. Finally, after
giving both groups the drink, I entered how much they both lasted and how many
mistakes they did reading the stoop effect paragraph.

This experiment showed me that there is a real influence of suggestion in the

stroop effect, as the experimental group’s average of time and mistakes in the
second moment was lesser than that of the control group.

It is important to mention that both groups had a decrease in their results and this
could have happened because of a transfer of learning. In other words, both
groups showed less average in mistakes and time in the second moment because
they learned how to do it with the first moment. Anyway, the average was lesser in
the experimental group, what shows that the group to which I gave suggestion
rendered much more in comparison to the other one.