ABSTRACT
Although the new psychophysics set as its first priority the rewriting of the psychophysical law, the direct scaling procedures have produced dividends in other areas of behavioral science. The fallout from the development of the direct methods of cross-modality matching has introduced ratio-scale quantification into sociology, criminology, and political science. The procedures used to scale brightness and loudness have found immediate translation into the scaling of such variables as the perceived status of occupations, the seriousness of crimes, and the degree of national aggressiveness. Magnitude estimation has been the procedure most often employed in the new ventures into what might be called social psychophysics, but other cross-modality matches have occasionally been made. The widespread application of the direct scaling procedures in several different laboratories has established the usefulness and the validity of ratio scales of opinion created with several kinds of nonmetric stimuli.
