Stanley Smith Stevens

This article is about a psychologist. For a ship, see SS Stevens.

SS "Smitty" Stevens

Stanley Smith Stevens (November 4, 1906 – January 18, 1973)[1] was an American psychologist who founded Harvard's Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory, studying psychoacoustics,[2] and he is credited with the introduction of Stevens's power law. 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. In 1946 he introduced a theory of levels of measurement widely used by scientists but whose use in some areas of statistics has been criticized.[3] In addition, Stevens played a key role in the development of the use of operational definitions in psychology.[4]

A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Stevens as the 52nd most cited psychologist of the 20th century.[5] He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,[6] the United States National Academy of Sciences,[7] and the American Philosophical Society.[8]

  1. ^ Miller, George A. (1975). Biographical Memoirs. Vol. 47. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press. p. 524. ISBN 978-0-309-02245-3.
  2. ^ "Obituary: S. Smith Stevens". Physics Today. 26 (5): 81. May 1973. doi:10.1063/1.3128068.
  3. ^ Velleman, Paul F.; Wilkinson, Leland (1993). "Nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio typologies are misleading". The American Statistician. 47 (1): 65–72. doi:10.1080/00031305.1993.10475938. JSTOR 2684788.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Nicholson was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Haggbloom, Steven J.; Warnick, Renee; Warnick, Jason E.; Jones, Vinessa K.; Yarbrough, Gary L.; Russell, Tenea M.; Borecky, Chris M.; McGahhey, Reagan; Powell III, John L.; Beavers, Jamie; Monte, Emmanuelle (2002). "The 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century". Review of General Psychology. 6 (2): 139–152. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.586.1913. doi:10.1037/1089-2680.6.2.139. S2CID 145668721.
  6. ^ "Stanley Smith Stevens". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved December 16, 2022.
  7. ^ "Stanley S. Stevens". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved December 16, 2022.
  8. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved December 16, 2022.