Running head: Weber’s Law Confirming Weber’s Law John Jay College of Criminal Justice Confirming Weber’s Law During the nineteenth century, Ernst Heinrich Weber and his student Fechner developed a theory on human perception (http://ukdb.web.aol.com/hutchinson/encyclopedia/51/M0020351.htm). The law states that for a difference to be perceived, two stimuli must differ by a constant minimum percentage (Meyers, 1999). They went further to say that there was a just noticeable difference when comparing two stimuli. The just noticeable difference is the minimum difference that a person can detect between two stimuli fifty percent of the time (Meyers. 1999). Although their theory is necessary to study, most people now use Steven’s law (http://www.medfak.uu.se/fysiologi/Lectures/WebFech.html). Our experiment sought to see if weight detection of pennies conforms to Weber’s law. We wanted to replicate a situation in our classroom using weights to determine the just noticeable difference (jnd). According to the above theory, the jnd in the heavier weight will be significantly higher. MethodParticipantsThe participants were the twenty-seven students of Professor David Otis’ Experimental Psychology class. The group of twenty-seven was split into smaller groups. We were not paid with pecuniary funds, but we did receive partial credit towards our final grade in the class.ApparatusApproximately one hundred and fifty pennies were used as weights. Two plastic cups of equal size and weight were used to hold the pennies in, and the subjects used neckties donated by the professor as blindfolds.ProcedureAfter the groups were separated into groups of three or four, we were instructed to perform three trials. In each group each person got to be an experimenter and a subject at least once. First we placed ten pennies into each cup, and let the blindfolded subject feel the cups at equal weight. We then placed ...
