Stanley Smith Stevens (November 4, 1906 – January 18, 1973) was an American
psychologist
A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and interpretation of how indi ...
who founded
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
's Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory, studying
psychoacoustics
Psychoacoustics is the branch of psychophysics involving the scientific study of sound perception and audiology—how humans perceive various sounds. More specifically, it is the branch of science studying the psychological responses associated wit ...
, and he is credited with the introduction of
Stevens's power law
Stevens' power law is an empirical relationship in psychophysics between an increased intensity or strength in a physical stimulus and the perceived magnitude increase in the sensation created by the stimulus. It is often considered to supersede ...
. Stevens authored a milestone textbook, the 1400+ page ''Handbook of Experimental Psychology'' (1951). He was also one of the founding organizers of the
Psychonomic Society
The Psychonomic Society is an international scientific society of over 4,500 scientists in the field of experimental psychology. The mission of the Psychonomic Society is to foster the science of cognition through the advancement and communicati ...
. In 1946 he introduced a theory of
levels of measurement
Level of measurement or scale of measure is a classification that describes the nature of information within the values assigned to variables. Psychologist Stanley Smith Stevens developed the best-known classification with four levels, or scal ...
widely used by scientists but whose use in some areas of
statistics
Statistics (from German language, German: ''wikt:Statistik#German, Statistik'', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of ...
has been criticized. In addition, Stevens played a key role in the development of the use of
operational definitions
An operational definition specifies concrete, replicable procedures designed to represent a construct. In the words of American psychologist S.S. Stevens (1935), "An operation is the performance which we execute in order to make known a concept." F ...
in psychology.
[
A '']Review of General Psychology
''Review of General Psychology'' is the quarterly scientific journal of the American Psychological Association Division 1: The Society for General Psychology. The journal publishes cross-disciplinary psychological articles that are conceptual, th ...
'' survey, published in 2002, ranked Stevens as the 52nd most cited psychologist of the 20th century. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...
, the United States National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...
, and the American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...
.
Life
Stevens was born in Ogden, Utah
Ogden is a city in and the county seat of Weber County, Utah, United States, approximately east of the Great Salt Lake and north of Salt Lake City. The population was 87,321 in 2020, according to the US Census Bureau, making it Utah's eighth ...
to Stanley and Adeline (Smith) Stevens and educated in Latter-day Saint
Mormons are a religious and cultural group related to Mormonism, the principal branch of the Latter Day Saint movement started by Joseph Smith in upstate New York during the 1820s. After Smith's death in 1844, the movement split into several ...
-affiliated schools in Salt Lake City, Utah
Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the Capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Utah, most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the county seat, seat of Salt Lake County, Utah, Sal ...
. He spent much of his childhood in the polygamous
Crimes
Polygamy (from Late Greek (') "state of marriage to many spouses") is the practice of marriage, marrying multiple spouses. When a man is married to more than one wife at the same time, sociologists call this polygyny. When a woman is ...
household of his maternal grandfather Orson Smith. At the death of his parents in 1924, he spent the next 3 years on an LDS mission in Switzerland
). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
and Belgium
Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...
. He attended the University of Utah
The University of Utah (U of U, UofU, or simply The U) is a public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the flagship institution of the Utah System of Higher Education. The university was established in 1850 as the University of De ...
from 1927 to 1929 and Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
for the next two years, graduating with an A.B.
Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...
in psychology in 1931.
Shortly after arriving in Massachusetts to begin a Ph.D., he left the LDS church. After two years of graduate study, he received his Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
, where he served under Edwin Boring
Edwin Garrigues (Garry) Boring (23 October 1886 – 1 July 1968) was an American experimental psychologist, Professor of Psychology at Clark University and at Harvard University, who later became one of the first historians of psychology. A ''Rev ...
as assistant in psychology, from 1932 to 1934.
The following year he spent studying physiology under Hallowell Davis Hallowell Davis (August 31, 1896 – August 22, 1992) was an American physiologist, otolaryngologist and researcher who did pioneering work on the physiology of hearing and the inner ear. He served as director of research at the Central Instit ...
at Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is consi ...
, and in 1935 served as a research fellow in physics at Harvard for a year. In 1936, Stevens accepted a position as an instructor in experimental psychology at Harvard University.
He married Maxine Leonard in 1930 and had a son, Peter Smith Stevens, in 1936.[ He married Geraldine Stone, who had worked in the Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory from its inception, in 1963.
]
Science of Science discussion group
Stevens played a key role in organising the Science of Science discussion group
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...
, which met on eight occasions from October 1940 to mid-1941. Stevens, who was noted for the clarity of his scientific writing, attracted to the group a number of participants whose aim was the "debabelisation of science". The group was also influenced by the 5th Congress of the Unity of Science, which had been held at Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
in September 1939 and featured a number of well-known scientists from different disciplines.
Work
Stevens' experimental and theoretical work lay primarily in the fields of psychophysics
Psychophysics quantitatively investigates the relationship between physical stimuli and the sensations and perceptions they produce. Psychophysics has been described as "the scientific study of the relation between stimulus and sensation" or, m ...
and psychoacoustics
Psychoacoustics is the branch of psychophysics involving the scientific study of sound perception and audiology—how humans perceive various sounds. More specifically, it is the branch of science studying the psychological responses associated wit ...
. One of his most influential contributions was his definition of a measurement scale defined by four types: Nominal, Ordinal, Interval, and Ratio. (see Level of measurement
Level of measurement or scale of measure is a classification that describes the nature of information within the values assigned to variables. Psychologist Stanley Smith Stevens developed the best-known classification with four levels, or scal ...
)
2001, pp. 15105–15108
See also
* ''The Logic of Modern Physics
''The Logic of Modern Physics'' is a 1927 philosophy of science book by American physicist and Nobel laureate Percy Williams Bridgman. The book is notable for explicitly identifying, analyzing, and explaining operationalism for the first time, and ...
''
References
*
* Nicholson, I. (2000). "S.S. Stevens". In Alan E. Kazdin (Ed.), ''Encyclopedia of Psychology.'' Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Press.
* Nicholson, I. (2005). "From the Book of Mormon to the Operational Definition: The Existential Project of S.S. Stevens". In William Todd. Schultz (Ed.), ''Handbook of Psychobiography'' (pp. 285–298). New York: Oxford University Press.
Further reading
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stevens, Stanley Smith
1906 births
1973 deaths
Former Latter Day Saints
Latter Day Saints from Massachusetts
Latter Day Saints from Utah
American Mormon missionaries in Switzerland
American Mormon missionaries in Belgium
20th-century Mormon missionaries
Scientists from Ogden, Utah
University of Utah alumni
Stanford University alumni
Harvard University alumni
Harvard University faculty
20th-century American psychologists
Members of the American Philosophical Society