Somatosensory perception of running shoe mass

Running shoes are often marketed based on mass. A total of 50 young adult males participated across two separate experiments to determine how well they could perceive the relative masses of five different running shoes using hands versus feet. For the foot portion, subjects were blindly fitted with the shoes and asked to rank their masses individually using visual analogue scales (VAS) and verbal rankings. For the hand portion, two different methods were used, one presenting all shoes simultaneously and the other presenting the shoes individually. Verbal accuracy and VAS scores correlated across subjects for the hand and foot, but accuracy in mass perception by the feet was 30% compared to 92% or 63% by the hand (depending on the method). These results indicate the foot perceives mass poorly compared to the hand, and that consumers' perception of shoe mass may come more from handling shoes versus wearing them.