Stanley Smith Stevens (November 4, 1906 – January 18, 1973) was an American psychologist who founded Harvard's Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory and is credited with the introduction of Stevens' 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 often used by statisticians.
In addition, Stevens played a key role in the development of the use of operational definitions in psychology.
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