12 T. L. Bolton and Donna L. IVithey 



vations taken by the method of right and wrong cases this same 

 individual difference is to be seen. Reagent W. took 398 obser- 

 vations and used the judgment "same" 187 times and the judg- 

 ment "-heavier" 211 times. This gives a difference of 24 in favor 

 of H. judgments. Reagent B. took 352 observations and used the 

 judgment "same" 190 times and the judgment "heavier" 162 

 times. This gives a difiference of 28 in favor of S. judgments. 

 An individual difiference, similar in the respect that some reagents 

 were disposed to render H. judgments rather than others, came 

 out in the experiments of Martin and Miiller.i As their method 

 dififered from ours the results are not entirely comparable. Thev 

 attribute their findings to dififerences in muscular vigor and 

 strength of reagents. While this suggestion may be applicable to 

 the present experiments, as the less muscular feminine reagent 

 has given results that accord with the suggestion, an empirical 

 study of the two reagents and their modes of judging would by 

 no means support the view that the tendency to render one kind 

 of judgment rather than the other had anything whatever to do 

 with the muscular endowment or the bodily vigor of the 'reagents. 

 It appears like a subjective attitude entirely to say one "thing 

 rather than another in cases of doubt. The reagents know that 

 five out of six times the second is heavier and they mav incline 

 toward saying "heavier" on account of the stronger probability 

 of being correct. One reagent may then take more chances than 

 another. The difificult thing is to be able to detect the presence 

 of the same weight following the standard, and both reagents 

 always had it in mind to keep the percentage of errors here down 

 as low as possible. 



The point of departure for our work was found in the obser- 

 vation that when the hand is held in a fixed position and a pres- 

 sure allowed to rest upon any skin area— in these experiments, 

 upon the skin of the palm,— the feeling does not remain in any 

 one place, and in successive applications of the pressure it does 

 not return to the same definitely localized area of the skin. Fur- 

 thermore, when one lifts a weight, with whatever care to do it in 



'^Loc. cit. 



186 



