Does Posture Influence the Stroop Effect?. (November 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Caron, Emilie E.; Reynolds, Michael G.; Ralph, Brandon C. W.; Carriere, Jonathan S. A.; Besner, Derek; Smilek, Daniel
• Is Part Of: Psychological science. Volume 31:Number 11(2020)
• Page Start: 1452
• Page End: 1460
• Publication Date: 2020-11
• Subjects: active workstations -- standing desks -- cognitive function -- selective attention -- Stroop task -- open data -- preregistered; Psychology -- Periodicals; 150.5
• DOI: 10.1177/0956797620953842
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0956-7976

Abstract

Rosenbaum, Mama, and Algom (2017) reported that participants who completed the Stroop task (i.e., name the hue of a color word when the hue and word meaning are congruent or incongruent) showed a smaller Stroop effect (i.e., the difference in response times between congruent and incongruent trials) when they performed the task standing than when sitting. We report five attempted replications (analyzed sample sizes: N = 108, N = 108, N = 98, N = 78, and N = 51, respectively) of Rosenbaum et al.'s findings, which were conducted in two institutions. All experiments yielded the standard Stroop effect, but we failed to detect any consistent effect of posture (sitting vs. standing) on the magnitude of the Stroop effect. Taken together, the results suggest that posture does not influence the magnitude of the Stroop effect to the extent that was previously suggested.