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.

Commercially available running shoes differ in terms of their relative masses. It is unclear how well consumers may be able to judge mass differences from wearing alone, though previous studies suggest that perceptual outcomes may be influenced by experimental design factors such as the length of time worn. The purpose of this study was to investigate how the number of shoes used in a testing session impacts wearers' mass perceptual accuracy. Forty-eight young adult males ran for 5 min in 4 pairs of shoes (their own running shoes plus 3 unfamiliar pairs) before being asked whether an unfamiliar running shoe was heavier or lighter than their own, and to indicate perceptions of shoe heaviness (mass), comfort, stability, and temperature using visual analogue scales (VAS). A subset (n=18) was also asked to provide global rank orderings after wearing all 4 pairs of shoes. Participants were 67% accurate in the heavier/lighter task and 64% accurate in the global rank order task. Global rank order scores and VAS heaviness marks were significantly and positively correlated. Mass accuracy scores (n=48) were then compared to a previous study (n=25) performed by the same investigators using the same methods but with 6 pairs of shoes instead of 4. No difference in accuracy scores for either the heavier/lighter comparisons or global rank order scores between the study populations was found, suggesting that the number of test shoes may not influence mass perception accuracy.