An automatic red-female association tested by Stroop task

Abstract

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, participants were instructed to indicate whether a target word presented in either red, green, or gray font color, was a male or female concept. Results showed a congruent effect of red-female association that red font color facilitated feminine words categorization and inhibited masculine words categorization. Experiment 2 tested whether red-female association could affect perceptual font color categorization. Participants were asked to discriminate the font color that presented in different saturation levels of red or green while ignoring the word’s meaning. Results showed that participants responded faster and made fewer errors when categorizing red font color for feminine words than masculine words. Those results suggest an automatic activated red-female association in both conceptual gendered word categorization and perceptual font color discrimination.