An Automatic Red-Female Association Tested by the Stroop Task

Abstract

Previous studies showed stereotyped color-gender associations (e.g., red/pink is female, and blue/green is male). Here, we investigated the automaticity of color-gender associations using two Stroop-word categorization tasks. Ten Japanese gendered words were chosen as visual stimuli. In Experiment 1 (N = 23), participants were instructed to indicate whether a target word presented in either red, green, or gray font color was a masculineor feminine word. Results showed a congruency effect of red-female association that red font color facilitated feminine words categorization and inhibited masculine words categorization than other colors.No effect of green-male association was observed. Experiment 2 (N = 23 newly recruited participants) tested whether the congruency effect of color-gender associationscould bias perceptual font color categorization. Participants were asked to discriminate the font color in low saturation was red or green while ignoring the word’s meaning. Results showed that participants responded faster and made fewer errors when categorizing red font colors for feminine words than masculine words. A congruent effect of green-male association on performance accuracy was observed and there was no effect on response times. Through two experiments, an automaticallyactivated red-female association in conceptual gendered word categorization and perceptual font color discriminationwas observed. Those results suggest that color-gender associations could be strong to bias both conceptual gender and perceptual color processing.