Abstract
Whether comfort and discomfort are part of the same continuum or separate continua has been disputed for a long time. The purpose of this study was to examine the factors that mediate comfort and discomfort. Fifty-eight University of Nebraska - Lincoln students (40 females, 18 males) volunteered to participate in the study. Participants took part in anthropometric measurements, sorting tasks, and attribute ratings in either the Comfort or Discomfort condition. Anthropometric measures revealed males and females were relatively equivalent and therefore were not separated in further analyses. MDS supported the use of a four-dimensional solution to depict the similarities and differences among the sixteen gloves for both comfort and discomfort conditions. Further analyses of the regression weights revealed that for some dimensions participants used different criteria for comfort and discomfort judgments. While dimensional analyses and stimuli positions indicated comfort and discomfort are part of the same continuum, attribute analyses provided conflicting evidence that “same continuum” descriptions of comfort and discomfort are too simplistic.
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