Sensometrie

Sensometry

Research area experimental sensometry and phenometry

"Measure everything that can be measured and make measurable what cannot be measured" (Galileo Galilei).

Sciences are defined by object, method and measure. For the exact sciences, Galileo Galileo set the standards for accurate measurement and the experimental method as the "royal road to knowledge."

Until the middle of the 19th century, there was a consensus among scientists that psychology, whose subject is the experience and behavior of people, could not become a science because there was no way to use experimentation as a method to measure human experience.

This changed in 1860 with the appearance of the "Elements of Psychophysics" by the Leipzig physicist Gustav Theodor Fechner. On the morning of October 22, 1850, he had the idea of using the "ebenmerklichen Empfindungsunterschied" as a unit for measuring the intensity of experience. In the following years, he was able to prove that psychological objects could be studied and measured experimentally. He thus laid the foundation for scientific psychology as it is still taught today. In his memory, psychologists from all over the world celebrate Fechner Day every October 22.

Today, the nature and intensity of human experience can be measured qualitatively and quantitatively using sophisticated psychophysical and phenometric methods. Precise measurements form the basis of human engineering. They serve to adapt the cultural and technical environment to the possibilities and needs of people.

The common goal of our research work is to determine the fundamentals and conditions for realistic psychological measurement, to derive measurement instructions from them, and to make the measurement methods usable for applied problems. In research projects that ideally combine basic and applied research.

Current application-oriented research areas are

- the investigation of olfactory perception
- the quantitative recording of physical and cognitive stresses and stress consequences