IMHO, normal healthy people shooting normal well fitting rifles will find their "felt recoil" experience toparallel the "actual recoil"(as calculated) IF both actual and felt judgmentsaddress both "how hard" and "how fast"--- not just this one is "nice" and that one is "too much".

Using the American "school of hard knocks" methodology, some factors which may cause folks to "mis-judge" one cartridge against another has a lot to do with things other than the "cartridge":
** Poor technique which varies widely from instance to instance
**Not understanding the importance of stock fit
** Not paying attention to or taking into account rifle weights
** Not taking into account their choice of bullet weight and loading

and last but not least....
** Pre-indoctrination as to what will be "good" and what will be "bad"

Beyond that,IMO if it is true that"it all depends on the individual"thena discussion of felt recoil is not possible and really meaningless.I don't think so;one can always focus on the outlyers torender an idea useless. However, take a thousand shooters with no physical or mental disabilities, educate them as to recoil components andrecoil management, and have them shoot 5 rifles spanning the gambit of recoil and I'm betting their reports will statisticallylparallel the actual recoil model fairly closely (even though there were, say, 61 out of that 1000who were "all over the board" or so sensitive that 'everything but the 243' was unimaginably horrible).

I have found the recoil calculator to be an excellent guideas to what to expect from a more powerful cartridge as you move up. However, I temper those numbers by the other variables discussed above.