The Stroop Competition – A Social-Evaluative Stroop Test

The Stroop test is one of the most widely used protocols to induce cognitive stress and reliably activates the sympathetic nervous system (SNS). However, it only moderately activates the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, the stress axis responsible for cortisol secretion.

Since adding social-evaluative elements to established stress protocols has proven to increase HPA axis activity, we designed the “Stroop Competition”, a novel stress protocol based on the Stroop Color Word test that adds social-evaluative feedback by conducting the test against a fake opponent with subsequent performance evaluation.

Publications