An automatic red-female association tested by the Stroop task

Abstract

Colors have been reported to be associated with genders (e.g., reddish color—females). Here, we investigated color-gender associations (red-female/green-male) among Japanese participants 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 masculine or feminine word. Results showed a congruency effect of red-female association that red font color facilitated the categorization of feminine words and inhibited the categorization of masculine words compared to other colors. No significant effect of green-male association was observed. Experiment 2 (N = 23 newly recruited participants) examined whether the congruency effect of color-gender associations could bias perceptual font color categorization. Participants were asked to discriminate whether the font color, with 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. Additionally, a congruent effect of green-male association on performance accuracy was observed, although it did not affect response times. These results indicate the existence of an automatically activated red-female association, which can influence both conceptual gender categorization and perceptual color processing.