One way males and females may think differently is in visual selective attention. The Stroop effect tests this by asking people to name ink colors while ignoring mismatched color words — rows of color words printed in the wrong ink. When twenty male and twenty female participants each read the ink colors aloud while a stopwatch runs, the times diverge. Females averaged about 35.7 seconds while males averaged about 46.9 seconds, suggesting females filtered out the conflicting word meaning faster.

Your brain reads words automatically, even when you try to ignore them. That automatic reading slows you down when you name the ink color of a mismatched color word. In one test, participants read ink colors out loud while ignoring the word meaning. Females averaged about 35.7 seconds while males averaged about 46.9 seconds, showing that some people resist this interference better than others.

Selective attention is tested when two signals compete and you must focus on only one. You show rows of color words printed in the wrong ink to twenty male and twenty female participants. Each person reads the ink colors out loud while ignoring the word meaning. You time each person with a stopwatch to measure the effort of focusing.