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As the Crow Flies: Bias in Consumers' Map-Based Distance JudgmentsAuthor(s): Priya Raghubir and Aradhna KrishnaReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Jun., 1996), pp. 26-39Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2489663 .Accessed: 12/02/2012 13:37

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As the Crow Flies: Bias in Consumers'

Map-Based Distance Judgments

PRIYA RAGHUBIR ARADHNA KRISHNA*

Consumers make distance judgments when they decide which store to visit or which route to take. However, these judgments may be prone to various spatial perception biases. While there is a rich literature on spatial perceptions in urban planning and environmental and cognitive psychology, there is little in the field of consumer behavior. In this article we introduce the topic of spatial perceptions as an area of research in marketing. We extend the literature on spatial perceptions by proposing that consumers use the direct distance between the endpoints of a path, or the distance "as the crow flies," as a source of information while making distance judgments-the shorter the direct distance, the shorter the distance estimate. We study two spatial features that affect direct distance-path angularity (i.e., the size of the angle between path segments) and path direction (i.e., whether the path retraces back or not). We further propose and demonstrate that the direct- distance bias is due to the perceptual salience of direct distance and is used by consumers in an automatic manner. Theoretical implications for the manner in which consumers process spatial information and the use of cognitive heuristics while making spatial judgments are discussed.

A number of distance judgments are based on the reading of maps. A store choice decision at a mall

is often based on referring to the map of a mall. Route decisions and choice of sites to visit in a store, amuse- ment park, or zoo are also often based on a reading of a location map. Further, particular groups of consumers have a high propensity to make map-based judgments. Specifically, tourists as a group use maps to such an extent that referring to a map almost suggests that a person is a tourist. Map-based decisions, therefore, are fairly common in many marketing contexts and will become even more so with the growth of internet advertising. While the study of spatial perceptions and

mental maps has always been very important in city planning (Lynch 1950), it has only received sporadic interest from marketing academics (Farley and Ring 1967; Mackay and Olshavsky 1975; Sommer and Ait- kens 1982), although it is increasingly of interest to marketing practitioners (Larson 1993).

For instance, imagine that you are visiting the Mall of America for the first time but are only there for a short time. On reaching the main entrance, you want to get some coffee quickly before you look for a pair of shoes. The size of the mall is overwhelming. You refer to the mall map to identify the closest coffee shop and then look for a shoe shop near the coffee shop. Given that there are a number of options marked on the map, are there any visual cues that will systematically bias your judgment of how close different stores are?

Or take another example. Imagine that you are in Sydney for work and are taking an afternoon off to do some sightseeing. You look at the tourist map of the city and nearby areas, needing to identify one location where you can spend an afternoon sightseeing. An important criterion for you is that it should be close to your current location because you have only a few hours to spare. Are there any visual cues on the map that will lead you to perceive that one location is closer than the other, even if they are roughly the same distance away?

A major objective of this article is to introduce the topic of spatial judgments as an area of research in marketing. Within the topic of spatial judgments, we focus

*Priya Raghubir is an assistant professor in the Department of Marketing, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clearwater Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong. Aradhna Krishna is an associate professor at the Graduate School of Business, Columbia Uni- versity, 511 Uris Hall, New York, NY 10027. Please address all cor- respondence to the first author. We wish to thank the participants of the Columbia-New York University-Yale marketing colloquium at Columbia University (May 1993) for their comments and sugges- tions. The comments of Noel Capon, Imran Currim, Avijit Ghosh, Zeynap Gurhan, Gita Venkataramani Johar, Don Lehmann, Durairaj Maheswaran, Geeta Menon, Lydia Price, Bernd Schmitt, and Nader Tavassoli on earlier drafts were very useful. We particularly appreciate the comments and criticisms of the editor, associate editor, and two anonymous reviewers through the review process. We also wish to thank Kamel Jedidi, Sharan Jagpal, and David Wooten for their as- sistance in data collection.

26 C 1996 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc. * Vol. 23 * June 1996

All rights reserved. 0093-5301/97/2301-0003$2.00

CONSUMERS' DISTANCE JUDGMENTS 27

in this article on distance judgments. Specifically, we study the effect of direct distance between the endpoints of a path on the perceived length of the path in the context of a map-based judgment. We propose that consumers use the direct distance between two points as a heuristic when making perceptual judgments. This leads to paths with shorter direct distances being perceived to be shorter than paths of the same length with longer direct distances. Further, we suggest that the salience of direct distance hinders people from accurately encoding other perceptual information (namely, the actual path configuration) that might limit the bias in their judgment. Moreover, even if they were to encode the information that would allow more unbiased as- sessments, direct distance is more salient and requires little effort to use and therefore remains a judgmental input. It is interesting that undirected resource avail- ability is not as effective in reducing the use of direct distance as a source of information as are prompts that force an assessment of the available perceptual information.

Our research extends the vast amount of work on the use of heuristics in the domain of semantic cognition (see Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky [1982] for a review) to that of visual perception. Mainstream marketing researchers studying the manner in which information is processed by consumers have primarily focused on semantic information (e.g., Bettman 1979). The effect of visual information in marketing contexts has predominantly been studied in the persuasion context-in terms of how visual stimuli enhance or detract from the persuasiveness of verbal information (Childers and Houston 1984; Heckler and Childers 1992; Hous- ton, Childers, and Heckler 1987). This article studies how the use of visual heuristics in visual information processing biases distance judgments.

CONCEPTUAL BACKGROUND

Although a comprehensive review of the literature on visual processing in psychology and urban planning is beyond our scope here, we use this article as a starting point for consumer behavior research in the area of spatial perceptions. One area that has received substan- tial attention from researchers studying distance perceptions is the effect of clutter, or the presence of spatial features that need to be visually processed. Researchers have found that a distance is perceived to be greater with the presence of spatial features such as landmarks (e.g., Allen 1981; Allen, Siegel, and Rosinski 1978), barriers (Nasar et al. 1985), intervening points (Thorn- dyke 1981), and intersections (Sadalla and Staplin 1980a).

Researchers have tried to replicate the clutter effect using the number of turns as a cluttering feature, but the findings are mixed. Lee (1963) found that busi- nessmen did not park in a lot near the city center but

at a lot approximately the same distance away with a straighter route to the city center. He hypothesized that this was because of the number of turns in the route to the parking lot near the city center. To test this hypothesis, Lee asked subjects to estimate the length of 6-, 8-, or 10-inch lines that had between one and five right angles distributed along their length. He found evidence for overestimation of length as a function of the number of angles in the lines. Sadalla and Magel (1980) directly tested Lee's hypothesis for traversed routes and found that the greater the number of right- angle turns (seven vs. two) in a traversed 200-foot path, the longer the estimate of the distance. In a related context, Krishna and Raghubir (forthcoming) demonstrated that under short, controlled time exposures, lines containing the same number of dots were perceived to be longer when they had nine (vs. four) turns.

However, Herman, Norton, and Klein (1986) were not able to replicate the effect of turns on distance estimates. They found that a path with two turns, pro- ceeding in a northeasterly direction, was perceived to be no longer, and in fact was estimated to take a shorter time to walk, than a straight path of equal length. In a second study, they demonstrated that a path with four turns was estimated to be no longer than a path of equal length with just one turn. In a third experiment, they showed that even when the number of turns in two 120- foot paths differed by six, the path with eight turns was not estimated to be longer than the path with two turns. Given that the effect of clutter has been fairly robustly demonstrated for distance estimates, Herman et al.'s (1986) results are surprising. Their results raise the question of whether manipulations of the number of turns along a path affect the perceived distance through an alternate route. We suggest that the effect of turns on the direct distance between the endpoints of a line might account for the conflicting results of Sadalla and Magel (1980) and those of Herman et al. (1986).

HYPOTHESES

Theories explaining the clutter effect assume that when making a distance judgment people go through a piecemeal, systematic processing of each aspect of a space, whether they store individual attributes of the space in a mental representation (i.e., the information storage model; Sadalla and Staplin 1980b) or visually scan the route in a piecemeal fashion (i.e., the analog timing model; Thorndyke 1981). However, given limited cognitive resources, people may instead use effort- saving heuristics that often lead to biased judgments even when the information necessary to complete the task is available. People may make judgments based on visual information using cognitive heuristics through a process similar to the heuristic processing of semantic information in judgment tasks (see, e.g., Tversky and Kahneman 1974).

28 JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH

Use of Direct Distance as a Source of Information

We suggest that the direct distance between the endpoints of a path (which need not be straight) is one of the most perceptually salient features of the path. This direct distance operates as a source of information when estimating total distance. In this process, one first locates the endpoint objective (by looking at the direct distance) and then- explores how to get there (through studying the configuration of the path in a piecemeal manner). When the direct distance between the endpoints of a path is not related to the actual path length, the use of direct distance as a source of information can lead to a biased perception of distance.

Direct distance may explain the conflicting findings concerning the effect of turns on perceived distance (Herman et al. 1986; Sadalla and Magel 1980). The stimuli used by Herman et al. differed from that used by Sadalla and Magel. In each of the three stimuli used by Herman et al. (1986), paths with a greater number of turns were systematically associated with shorter direct distances between their endpoints than paths of equal length with fewer turns. If direct distance affects distance perception, its effect could have cancelled out the clutter effect resulting from the number of turns in Herman et al.'s (1986) study. In other words, the effect of direct distance may have prevented Herman et al. from replicating Sadalla and Magel's (1980) results.

If people use the direct distance between endpoints of a line as a source of information when making distance judgments, then when two identical distances differ in the distance between their endpoints because of different configurations, the distance with a shorter direct distance between the endpoints will be perceived to be shorter. We term this the "direct-distance bias."

Factors Affecting Direct Distance

There are two orthogonal spatial features that can affect the perception of direct distance of two non- straight paths of equal length: path direction and path angularity. Path direction refers to the overall course or bearing of a path. A unidirectional path is defined as one that maintains the same general direction, say, northeast to southwest, while a path that goes north to south and then back north is termed a retraced path. By retracing we mean turning around and going back toward the same direction. Two paths can be of equal length, but if one is unidirectional and the other retraces its direction, they can differ in the distance between their two endpoints. The path that retraces direction has a shorter direct distance than the unidirectional path. Accordingly, the direct-distance hypothesis predicts that the path that retraces its direction will be judged to be shorter than one of equal length that does not retrace its path.

Paths of the same length can differ in their direct distance only if there are turns along at least one path. Even when paths have the same number of turns, the angularity of the path can affect actual direct distance. Path angularity refers to the divergence between segments of a path. Segments of paths with wider angles diverge more from each other. This divergence results in a greater distance between the path's endpoints. Therefore, the direct-distance hypothesis predicts that paths with sharper angles will be perceived to be shorter than paths with wider angles.

Perceptual Salience of Direct Distance

We propose that direct distance is used as a source of information because it is a perceptually salient visual cue. Salience can be considered "a property of stimuli in context" (Fiske and Taylor 1991). Direct distance is arguably one of the most salient features of a spatial configuration. Given this property, people may not accurately encode other perceptual information that would allow them to make a more accurate judgment of the length of a path and reduce the direct-distance bias. However, even if they were to use sources of information that aid unbiased judgment, direct distance would remain a source of information because of its salience; therefore, even though the direct-distance bias may lessen, it need not be eliminated. On the basis of this, we expect that the direct-distance bias will be greater when direct distance as a source of information is made more perceptually salient.

Salience can be affected by factors external to the perceiver or internal to the perceiver. An external factor affecting perceptual salience is the mere physical presence of the stimuli. In a social salience context, it has been shown that a person can be made salient by dominating the visual field (Taylor and Fiske 1975). If the bias in distance estimates is due to biased perception, such that while viewing stimuli the perceptual salience of the direct distance leads one to "see" the path with a shorter direct distance as shorter, then the direct-distance bias should be greater in the presence of the stimuli. However, when a distance judgment is based on memory rather than stimuli, then other aspects of the spatial configuration should be recalled to the same extent as the direct distance. Therefore, the overpowering effect of direct distance as a source of information would be diluted by the inclusion of other nonbiasing perceptual cues as sources of information for distance judgments. On the basis of this we expect that the presence of a visual map at the time of making a distance judgment (a stimuli-based judgment) would lead to a greater bias than the absence of such stimuli (a memory-based judgment).

Salience can also be affected by the perceiver's internal state. Specifically, when a source of information is more accessible, one would expect perceivers to find it


more salient. If a concept such as direct distance were activated in people's minds, the concept would be more accessible and accordingly more likely to be used. Ac- cessibility, in turn, is a function of the recency and pri- macy of activation of a concept. This would suggest that making people aware of direct distance as a source of information would increase the direct-distance bias. Note that this is counter to what one would expect if people were able to control their use of direct distance as a source of information.

Use of Direct Distance: An Automatic Process?

Shiffrin and Schneider (1977) proposed that there are two ways of processing information: with a controlled process, which typically demands cognitive resources and is easily modified, and with an automatic process, which does not demand cognitive resources and, being less controllable, is difficult to alter (see also Schneider and Shiffrin 1977). They proposed that the two modes operate simultaneously, with automatic processes per- -forming the initial analysis of sensory inputs and controlled processes using this output and integrating it with further information to arrive at judgments. There is tentative evidence for the partial automaticity of salience effects in general (Taylor and Fiske 1978).

One important criterion for an automatic process is its effortless nature (Bargh 1989). Automatic processes occur even when people have limited cognitive capacity and therefore may operate even when cognitive resources are scarce. This implies that if a source of information were used in an automatic manner, it would have a greater effect when cognitive resources are constrained than when they are abundantly available (Bargh and Thein 1985; Bargh and Tota 1988; Gilbert, Pelham, and Krull 1988). This is because when cognitive resources are constrained, the source of information that is automatically processed will have a proportionately greater impact on judgments, given that many of the conscious, effort-requiring adjustments will not be possible (Bargh 1989; Bargh and Thein 1985; Gilbert 1989). Therefore, if the use of direct distance as a source of information is automatic, the direct-distance bias will be greater when cognitive capacity is constrained compared with when it is unconstrained.

Summary of Hypotheses

On the basis of the above arguments, we hypothesize the following.

Hi: The direct distance between two points is used as a source of information, which leads to paths-with shorter direct distances being perceived to be shorter than paths of equal length with longer direct distances.

H2: Direct distance is used as a source of information because of its hlgh perceptual salience.

H3: The use of direct distance as a source of information has an automatic component inasmuch as it is effortless.

The first three studies test the first hypothesis, the next two study the second hypothesis, and the last studies the third hypothesis.

STUDY 1: PATH ANGULARITY, PATH DIRECTION, AND THE DIRECT-

DISTANCE BIAS

Method

The subjects were 55 graduate business students at a large northeastern university who completed the experimental task during a regularly scheduled class. We manipulated path direction and path angularity as within-subjects factors, using a different map for each. Each map had a pair of paths that were of equal length and identical in every respect except for the direct distance (operationalized by path direction [Fig. 1] or path angularity [Fig. 2]). Thus, each pair of paths had an equal number of turns and segments, and the length of each sequential segment was the same across the two paths. One path had a longer direct distance than the other.

Subjects were shown a map and asked to study it before responding to questions involving the dependent measures. Subjects were asked to estimate the length (in feet) for the pair of paths in each map, on the basis of the scale on the map. They were allowed to turn back to the map while responding to the question. They then repeated this procedure with the second map. The order of administration of the two maps, manipulations of path direction and path angularity, was counterbalanced. To ensure that path direction and angularity were not confounded, the path in the path angularity manipulation retraced its direction back to the same location on the horizontal axis and the path direction manipulation used paths with right angles between segments. The left-right orientation of the pair of paths was also counterbalanced such that for half the subjects the path with the longer direct distance was on the left- hand side and for the other half it was on the right- hand side. To control for the potential effect of vertical or horizontal orientation on estimation (i.e., the Muller- Lyer illusion; Finger and Spelt 1947), all manipulations were along the vertical axis. Alphabets, selected at ran- dom, were used to name the paths. Finally, subjects reported left- or right-handedness and gender, as these have been demonstrated to affect distance perceptions (see, e.g., Masin and Agostini 1991).


FIGURE 1

PATH DIRECTION STIMULI: STUDY 1

Assume that you are at point marked "X" in a busy maH and are carrying two heavy packages back to your car. You may either exit from the exit marked "J" or you may exit from the exit marked "G." Both exits are equidistant kom your car. Please study the map closely and then tum the page to answer the questions which foRow.

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SCALE

= 10 feet

Results

Left-right orientation, order of administration, gender, and handedness had no main or interaction effects on the dependent measure. These factors will not be discussed further. The analysis was a repeated-measures ANOVA for both maps, treating the two distance estimates as a within-subjects factor. The dependent measure was the distance judgment for each direct-distance manipulation. The results support the direct-distance hypothesis and are interpreted individually for each map.

Path Direction. As expected, the path that retraced its direction was estimated to be shorter (X = 139.6) than the path that continued unidirectionally (X = 144.7; F(1,54) = 5.94,p < .018). Both were significant underestimates of the actual distance (177.8; p's < .05).

Path Angularity. As expected, the path with a wider angle was estimated to be longer (X = 119.8) than the path with a sharper angle (X = 109.6; F(1,54) = 42.41, p < .01). Again, both were significant underestimates of the actual distance ( 153.3; p's < .05).

Therefore, as predicted by Hypothesis 1, paths with a shorter direct distance, either because the general direction of their path segments retraced or because they had a sharper angle between segments, were estimated to be shorter than paths of equal length with a longer direct distance.

STUDY 2: REPLICATION IN A FIELD SCENARIO

Consumers often make distance judgments when standing at one point (e.g., in a mall) and looking ahead to decide to which of two points (e.g., exits) they will go. On the other hand, they often refer to a location map to make the same decision. In Study 2 we wished to examine whether the effect of path angularity is in- fluenced by the angle of view (i.e., when people have a ground-level perspective with a frontal view of an area vs. when they have an aerial view such as that presented by a map). At another level, we wished to demonstrate that effects found in a lab setting with a map also obtain in a field setting where people have a frontal view of a


FIGURE 2

PATH ANGULARITY STIMULI: STUDY 1

Assume that you have just come out of Store G and are at the point on the path marked "X." You need to quicldy purchase a soda from a vending maebine. The closest vending machines are located at points N' and R'. Please study the map closely and then tum the page to answer the questions which follow.

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........ ...... ......................... . ...... . . . . .. . .. . . .. . .. ... . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . ... .. .. . .. . . . . . . . . . . .. .. . . . .. . . . . .. . . .. .. ... . .. .. ... . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . .. . .. .. . .. .. . . . .. . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . ... .. ... . ... .. .. . .. . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . .... . .. .. .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . .. . . . .. . ... .. .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .. . . .. .. . . . . . .. .. . . . .. . . . . . . . . . .. . . .. .. .. .. .. . . . .. . . . .. . . . . . .. ........................... ....................................................................... .............................................. ................................................................................................................................................... ........................... ........................................................................ .............................................. ................................................................................................................................................... ........................... ....................................................................... .............................................. ................................................................................................................................................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...............

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SCALE

= 10 feet

space and, accordingly, that the results are externally valid.

The manner in which people perceive paths might affect whether they use direct distance as a source of information when estimating total distance. It is a moot point whether direct distance is more perceptually salient with a frontal view or with an aerial view. On the one hand, an aerial view prominently highlights the bird's-eye distance from one point to another, which can arguably lead to the direct distance being more prominent. On the other hand, the aerial view also dis- plays the entire path configuration and should allow a

person to make a more accurate judgment. Presumably, a frontal view may also make direct distance salient. Therefore, given that direct distance is salient with both a frontal and an aerial view, paths with sharper angles should be perceived to be shorter in'both conditions, even if they are not differentially so across conditions.

Method

We used a one-way design manipulating experimental procedure between subjects-laboratory versus field conditions. A total of 32 subjects participated in the


FIGURE 3

FIELD SETTING USED TO TEST THE DIRECT-DISTANCE EFFECT: STUDY 2

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experiment, 18 in the field condition and 14 in the lab condition. Subjects were 10 male and 22 female adults between the ages of 25 and 60.

We located a field setting that naturally manipulated the angularity between segments (Fig. 3). This was a closed, uneven, U-shaped path with the ends of the U joined by another path at a 45-degree angle to one arm of the U and a 135-degree angle to the other. This con- necting path has a tree (at point X, see Fig. 4) midway dividing the path into two equal segments of 55 feet each. Subjects in the field condition were residents living around the area. Subjects stood next to the tree. On the arm of the U with the wider angle, a small pile of stones was placed exactly 55 feet along the path (at point Y; see Fig. 4). On the arm of the U with a sharper angle, an identical pile of stones was placed 57.5 feet along the path (at point Z; see Fig. 4). Thus, each of the paths, XY and XZ, was composed of two segments and one angle. One pile of stones was closer to the subject than the other; this point had a shorter direct distance to the tree, and, therefore, we expected subjects to judge the other point (point Y) to be farther. (Had the two points

been equidistant from the subject, we would not have been able to ask them which point was "closer" without misleading them into believing that, in fact, one point was closer than the other.) The paths were marked in thick chalk. A scale in feet was drawn in chalk next to the tree, behind the subject. Subjects were individually questioned. The procedure took approximately five minutes per person. On the day following data collection subjects were debriefed and told the actual lengths of the paths.

The field configuration was reproduced as a map for the lab condition (Fig. 4). Subjects in the lab condition were employees of a large northeastern university. Sub- jects in this condition were told to imagine that they were standing at the X point and were provided with a scale at the side of the map. They were individually questioned and debriefed immediately after completing the questions pertaining to the dependent measure.

Unlike Study 1, in which we used a distance estimation measure, in this study we used a distance discrimination measure. Ordinal dependent measures, such as distance discrimination, may more closely cor-


FIGURE 4

AERIAL VIEW OF STUDY 2 FIELD SETTING: STUDIES 2-6

respond to real-world ordinal distance judgments, such as those made when choosing between alternate routes, than measures of distance estimation. They also make the subject's task easier. Subjects were asked to judge which point, Y or Z, was closer (along the path) to where they were standing.

Results and Discussion As expected, a significant majority of subjects (29 of

32, 90.6 percent; p < .01) estimated the point on the path with the sharper angle (point Z, which had a shorter direct distance) to be closer than the point on the path with the wider angle (point Y, which had a longer direct distance), even though it was in fact farther away.

A loglinear analysis using the point that was judged to be closer as a dependent variable and the type of experimental procedure as a between-subjects factor did

not reveal a significant interaction (p > .25). Therefore, experimental procedure did not moderate -the bias with the judgment pattern in the field setting ( 17 of 18, 94.4 percent; p < .01), replicated in the lab setting (12 of 14, 85.7 percent; p < .01).

This study provides external validity for the direct- distance hypothesis tested in Study 1. It also demonstrates that the results of the laboratory condition, in which subjects have an aerial view of a configuration (i.e., a map-based judgment), can be replicated in a field scenario, in which subjects have a frontal view (i.e., a non-map-based judgment).

STUDY 3: THE (IN)ACCURACY OF MENTAL REPRESENTATIONS

Although direct distance appears to be the reason underlying the angularity bias in Studies 1 and 2, in this study we wished to better understand the manner in which it affects distance perceptions. We propose that people perceive the path with a shorter direct distance to be shorter because they focus on direct distance as a source of information in and of itself. Given this, there is no reason to expect that the representation of the lengths of the segments is biased. If representations of segments were biased, then path angularity might bias perceived distance through its effect on perceptions of segment lengths rather than in the manner we suggest. In Study 3, we wished to rule out this potential rival explanation for the direct-distance bias.

Method Subjects were 27 undergraduate business students

enrolled in an introductory marketing course at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology who completed the experimental task for partial course credit. There were two tasks: drawing and distance discrimination. We used the lab-condition stimuli of Study 2 (Fig. 4). The map was displayed with an overhead projector. Subjects were asked to reproduce the map while it was projected in front of them. They were then each provided with a copy of the map on a piece of paper and asked to judge which of the points was closer to the X point, to attempt to replicate the results of Study 2. Finally, subjects were debriefed and excused. The procedure took approximately 20 minutes.

The dependent measure for the drawing task was segment length. The length of each of the two segments of each path drawn, XY and XZ, was measured; thus, a total of four segments were measured. The dependent measure for the distance discrimination task that fol- lowed was the binary measure of which point was closer to X.

Results and Discussion

Distance Discrimination. The point with a shorter direct distance was estimated to be closer by 19 of the


27 respondents (60.4 percent; p < .05 by one-tailed bi- nomial z-test). Thus, Study 3 successfully replicated the angularity bias.

Segment Length. 'A repeated-measures ANOVA with the overall length of the XY and the XZ paths as a within-subjects factor showed that the two paths had been drawn equal to each other (F( 1,26) = .38, p = .54). This rules out the competing explanation that the direct- distance bias operates through biasing perceptions of relative lengths of segments. In the next study we explored a contextual effect moderating the bias.

STUDY 4: MEMORY-BASED VERSUS STIMULI-BASED JUDGMENTS

The judgment task used in Studies 1-3 required subjects to respond to the dependent measure while the stimuli were physically present in front of them. While this may mirror the judgment task in many real-life situations (e.g., deciding which store or mall to go to on the basis of a map), other situations calling for distance judgments may be memory based (e.g., deciding to visit fast-food restaurant A rather than B on the basis of a judgment that it is closer to the parking lot). For such memory-based judgments, consumers may use stored mental representations of a space (MacKay and Olshavsky 1975). Visual cues that affect distance perceptions may also affect perceptions of actual maps (i.e., mental maps) in a similar manner (see, e.g., Rand 1969).

The purpose of this study is to test Hypothesis 2, which stated that people's use of direct distance as a source of information would be directly proportional to its salience. Salience is manipulated in terms of the mere physical presence of the stimuli. We expected that the direct-distance bias would be greater in the stimuli- based task than in the memory-based task because of the greater perceptual salience of the biasing stimuli at the time of making the judgment.

Method Subjects were 65 undergraduate business students

enrolled in an introductory marketing class from the same university as in Study 3. They completed the experimental task during a regularly scheduled class for partial course credit.

We used a one-way between-subjects design manipulating the type of judgment task (memory based vs. stimuli based). Subjects were given an experimental booklet with instructions on the first page. We used the lab-condition stimuli of Study 2 (Fig. 4). Subjects were again shown the map with an overhead projector. Sub- jects in the stimuli-based condition completed the dependent measure while the map was on the screen, whereas those -in the memory-based condition completed it after the projector had been switched off. The experimenter ensured that subjects did not turn the page

and were not aware of the nature of the dependent measure while the map was being projected ofl the screen. Subjects' task was to judge which point was closer to the X point. Subjects then reported left- or right-handedness and gender, as these have been demonstrated to affect distance perceptions (see, e.g., Masin and Agostini 1991). Finally, they completed a suspicion probe and were debriefed and excused. The procedure took approximately 10 minutes.

Results Handedness and gender did not affect the dependent

variable and are not analyzed further. The point estimated to be closer was treated as a binary variable and subjected to a loglinear analysis with type of judgment task as a between-subjects factor. As expected, the analysis revealed a significant interaction effect (X2(1) = 3.8, p < .05), but neither of the main effects was significant (p < . 10). An analysis of this interaction reveals that in the stimuli-based condition, 22 of 31 respondents (71 percent) judged the point with a shorter direct distance to be closer. However, this percentage was significantly lower when the task was memory based (16 of 34, or 47 percent), when the two points were equally likely to be judged to be closer to X, even though the point with the shorter direct distance was actually farther. There- fore, consistent with the perceptual salience hypothesis (Hypothesis 2), the direct-distance bias was apparent to a greater extent in the stimuli-based task.

STUDY 5: AWARENESS AS A MODERATOR OF THE

DIRECT-DISTANCE BIAS Study 5 aimed to test Hypothesis 2 with a different

manipulation of salience. While Study 4 manipulated salience of the stimuli in an external context, in Study 5 the salience of the stimuli was increased through the internal state- of the perceiver. We manipulated people's awareness of direct distance as a source of information and tested for any differences in the direct-distance bias in people's judgments of distance. On the basis of our argument that awareness increases the accessibility of direct distance as a source of information, we expected that subjects who were made aware would be more prone to the direct-distance bias than those who were not.

Method Subjects were 115 undergraduates drawn from the

same pool as in Studies 3 and 4. They completed the experimental task for partial course credit. We used a one-way design with awareness manipulated between subjects at two levels, unaware and aware. Subjects in the awareness condition were given the following instructions.


In this task you will be shown a map drawing. We are interested in studying how university students understand map drawings. In particular we are investigating the manner in which people estimate distance from maps. Prior research has found evidence that when people are asked to estimate the distance between two points, which are not connected by a straight line, they still use the straight-line distance, i.e., the "bird's eye" view between the points, to help them in their estimation. When the straight-line distance between the two points is smaller, i.e., the "bird's eye" view is smaller, the distance between the two points is estimated to be shorter.

Subjects were shown the map used in Studies 2 and 3 (Fig. 4) with an overhead projector and then asked to complete the same questions measuring distance discrimination used in Studies 2 and 3.

Results

Manipulation Checks. We used two measures to ascertain that subjects in the awareness condition un- derstood and believed the information provided. These were "People have been found to use the direct distance between two end-points of a path while estimating distance" and "The use of direct distance as an estimator of actual distance is associated with reduced effort." Subjects rated the extent to which they believed the two statements on seven-point semantic differential scales anchored at "definitely false" and "definitely true." The manipulation worked in the manner intended (X = 4.48 and 4.88, respectively).

Distance Discrimination. A loglinear analysis using judgment as the dependent variable revealed a significant main effect of direct distance (X2(1) = 19.8, p < .001). Awareness was a marginally significant mod- eration of this effect (X2(1) = 2.6, p < .10), such that in the unaware condition a significant majority (62.7 percent, 32 of 51; p < .05) of the respondents judged the point with a shorter direct distance to be closer, whereas in the aware condition, a higher percentage did so (76.6 percent, 49 of 64; p < .001).

The study shows that when direct distance as a potential source of information is made salient to subjects by making them aware of it, their reliance on it, instead of decreasing, may in fact increase. When people are aware of direct distance, they appear to be more likely to use it to make a judgment rather than recruit the resources necessary to ask the more basic question of whether direct distance is an appropriate cue for ren- dering the judgment.

STUDY 6: THE MODERATING EFFECT OF COGNITIVE LOAD ON THE USE

OF DIRECT DISTANCE The use of a source of information that appears to

be logically incorrect in making a judgment suggests

that the use of direct distance may have an automatic component. The inability to attenuate reliance on a source of information even when one is aware of it is one aspect of automaticity (Bargh 1989). Another is whether the use of such information is effortless.

The objective of Study 6 was to test Hypothesis 3, that the use of direct distance as a source of information may have the automatic component of being effortless. Specifically, we wished to assess the moderating role of cognitive load on the direct-distance bias. If the use of direct distance as a source of information requires little conscious effort, unlike the alternative input (i.e., path configuration), when cognitive resources are limited, subjects should use direct distance to a greater extent than when cognitive resources are unlimited. This is because in the latter case, subjects have the resources available to them to temper their use of direct distance as a source of information with the supplementary inclusion of actual distance. On the basis of this argument, under conditions of greater cognitive load the direct- distance bias should be greater. (See Gilbert et al. [ 1988] for similar manipulations used to assess the automaticity of a judgmental process.)

Method

Subjects were 117 undergraduate students drawn from the same pool as Studies 3-5 who completed the experimental task for partial course credit. We used a one-way between-subjects design, manipulating cognitive load at time of encoding (present vs. absent). The stimuli, dependent measure, and type of analysis were the same as in Study 4. Subjects in the cognitive load present condition were shown the map used in Studies 2-5 (Fig. 4) using an overhead projector and asked to count out loud along with the experimenter while they viewed the map. Subjects in the cognitive load absent condition were allowed to view the map for the same amount of time (one minute) and were not made to do the counting exercise. In both conditions the task was memory based. Subjects completed the dependent measure and a suspicion probe and were debriefed. The procedure took around 10 minutes.

Results

The loglinear analysis revealed a significant main effect of direct distance (X2(l) = 3.8, p < .05), with cognitive load exerting a significant interaction effect (X2( 1) = 5.44, p < .025). In the cognitive load present condition 41 out of 59 respondents judged the point with a shorter direct distance to be closer (70 percent, p < .005), whereas in the cognitive load absent condition, about half did so (28 of 58, 48 percent). This result from the latter condition replicates the result of Study 4, in which we found that when the task was memory based, respondents were equally likely (47 percent) to


judge either point to be closer. This also gives nomo- logical validity to our direct-distance tests in the memory-based task. Cognitive load moderated the extent of the direct-distance bias such that the bias was greater when subjects were cognitively busy at the time of processing the information. This suggests that direct distance can be used fairly effortlessly and is used even when subjects are cognitively busy.'

GENERAL DISCUSSION In this article we studied how consumers process spa-

tial information while making distance estimates. We demonstrated that the size of the angle between path segments affects distance judgments such that paths with wider angles are perceived to be longer than those with sharper angles. We also demonstrated that the general direction of path segments affects distance judgments such that paths that continue along the same general direction are perceived to be longer than those that retrace their direction.

Direct Distance as a Source of Information

Abstracting from the effects of path angularity and path direction, we suggest that the direct distance between path endpoints is a parsimonious explanation that explains both biases. The meta-analytic test of mean p's across the independent experiments reported in this article yields a mean p of .0165 (z = 4. 1, p < .001, where z = [0.50 - mean p][ VI2N] and Nis the number of studies; Edgington 1972; see also Rosenthal 1978), establishing the robustness of the direct-distance effect. Abstracting across different studies, our results suggest that the direct-distance bias is greater when direct distance is more perceptually salient. Specifically, perceptual salience can explain the bias's being greater when judgment tasks were stimuli based, as in Study 4 (variance in salience because of the external context), and when subjects were made aware of the bias, as in Study 5 (variance in salience because of the internal state of perceiver).

Automatic and Controlled Processes

One possible mechanism that may explain our results is a simple averaging phenomena in which people use

two sources of information, actual distance and direct distance, to make judgments. This would explain the direct-distance bias. However, this explanation would not be sufficient to explain why the direct-distance bias increases under conditions of cognitive load.

An alternative mechanism that may explain the direct-distance effect is that people's distance estimates involve a two-stage process, with the first stage involving a holistic appraisal of the space and the second stage requiring a piecemeal, systematic appraisal of the con- figural features of the space. The first, holistic appraisal is affected by a perceptually salient visual cue-the distance "as the crow flies," or the direct distance between the endpoints of a path. Specifically, people may anchor on direct distance and then adjust this anchor on the basis of their systematic appraisal of the space. Further, the initial anchor may be an automatic input and the subsequent adjustment a more controlled process. A similar anchor-and-adjust model of attributions, with the anchor being an automatic input and the adjustment being a controlled process, was tested by Gilbert et al. (1988). The methodology they used to test this model was to demonstrate that cognitively busy subjects made judgments more in line with their initial starting anchor than subjects who were not cognitively busy. They theorized that this was because the nonbusy subjects had sufficient cognitive resources to carry out the subsequent adjustment to the initial starting anchor. Using the same argument, we suggest that because the direct- distance bias was greater for subjects in the cognitive load condition (Study 6), the results of Study 6 are consistent with an anchor-and-adjust process, with the first stage being an automatic process and the second stage a controlled process: The classic test to demonstrate that an effect is uncontrollable is to demonstrate that making people aware of the effect does not reduce it (Moretti and Shaw 1989). The results of Study 5, in which subjects who were made aware of the direct-dis- tan'ce bias did not control their use of it but rather increased their reliance on it, supports the claim of the process's being automatic inasmuch as it is difficult to control consciously (Bargh 1989).

Areas for Future Research

The idea that people process spatial information in multiple sequential stages, with earlier inputs being chosen because of their perceptual salience in an automatic manner and later inputs being more controlled, is potentially interesting and may have applications beyond one-dimensional judgments such as distance. For example, judgments of a rectangular area may be based on the more salient longer dimension, inadequately ad- justing for the second shorter dimension, and judgments of the volume of cylindrical shapes may be based on the most perceptually salient dimension (e.g., height) with inadequate adjustment for width or depth. These

'We do not report two experiments that aimed at getting subjects to control their reliance on direct distance. In one we used a motivation manipulation, while in the other we specifically informed subjects that using direct distance as a source of information leads to more (or less) accurate judgments. In both experiments we replicated the direct-distance bias but did not find that either manipulation reduced the extent of the direct-distance bias. Using Bargh's (1989) criteria, this is consistent with the theory that the use of direct distance cannot be controlled through increasing motivation levels or training, and to that extent it may be an automatic input to the decision.


are areas for future research with obvious implications for package design and supermarket shelf layouts.

In Study 1 we found that direct-distance led to an underestimation of actual distance and that this underestimation was greater for the path with the shorter direct distance. Prior research has shown that large distances are underestimated and short distances are over- estimated (McNamara 1986; McNamara, Ratcliffe, and McKoon 1984; Thorndyke 198 1). If the distances presented in our study are perceived by subjects to be large, then this may explain the overall underestimation. While this was not the focus of our research, an under- standing of the factors that affect the accuracy of estimation is an important area of future research. Follow- up research in this area might also study how use of the direct-distance heuristic affects estimation time. Does it make a task easier and therefore faster? Or is it that because the initial anchor of direct distance needs to be subsequently corrected, its use actually increases estimation time? Such research would better elucidate whether an anchor-and-adjust process is at work or whether people simply average two sources of information, direct distance and actual distance, when making a judgment.

The proposition that direct distance is used to the extent that it is perceptually salient suggests that the bias may possibly be eliminated for individuals who are able to recreate visual images vividly and may therefore be able to process the entire path. Also, individuals from cultures in which the script used is pictorial (e.g., Chinese or Japanese) might have a better visual imagery ability and therefore may be less prone to the direct- distance bias than those from cultures using a phonetic script.

Another area of future research would be to consider the other factors affecting perceptions of distance (e.g., the extent of clutter) and the possible effects of direct distance in other contexts (e.g., perception of number, area, and volume). In the context of number estimates, Krishna and Raghubir (forthcoming) varied exposure time to stimuli (lines) differing in number of dots, metric line length, number of line segments, and angle between segments (which affects direct distance) and explored the relative effects of those spatial factors on estimates of the number of dots under very short exposure times. They found that while direct distance exerts a strong main effect on numerosity estimates, its effect is moderated by other factors. Their results indicate further support for the use of a simplifying and dominating cognitive heuristic, such as direct distance, in the context of number estimation.

The effect of visual information in marketing contexts has predominantly been studied in the persuasion context. Researchers have studied the way in which visual stimuli enhanceF or detract from the persuasiveness of verbal information (Edell and Staelin 1983; Heckler and Childers 1992; Houston et al. 1987), the salience of vi-

sual information as compared with verbal descriptors (e.g., Childers and Houston 1984; Holbrook and Moore 1981), the affective appeal of the manner in which visual information is presented (e.g., Meyers-Levy and Per- acchio 1992), and the role of imagery in information processing (Childers and Houston 1982; Maclnnis and Price 1987; Rossiter and Percy 1978, 1983). This article demonstrates the effect of visual information in do- mains unrelated to persuasion. Biases in judgments due to the process of visual perception offer a rich and un- tapped area of future research. Consumers process visual information while making spatial judgments to estimate not only distance but also number, area, and volume. When consumers decide which waiting line to join, or even whether they will wait in line, their judgments involve perceptions of numerosity. When they estimate square footage for buying carpets or for buying houses, they make estimates of area. When they purchase one package size over another, their decisions involve perceptions of volume. Despite the multitude of such decisions, the areas of perceived distance, numerosity, area, and volume have received little attention from marketers. On the other hand, there exists a rich tradition of the study of spatial judgments based on visual cues in the areas of environmental psychology (e.g., Dainoff et al. 1974), experimental and cognitive psychology (e.g., Allen 1981; Krishna and Raghubir, forthcoming; McNamara 1986; McNamara et al. 1984), and urban planning (e.g., Antes, McBride, and Collins 1988; Lynch 1950) that provides a starting point for future research in this area.

This article contributes to the literature on judgmental biases, extending its domain from the semantic to the visual and from the cognitive to the perceptual. We propose that cognitive heuristics, widely tested for judgments using semantic and numerical information (see, e.g., Kahneman et al. 1982; Tversky and Kahne- man 1974), might also operate for spatial judgments using visual information. The suggestion that heuristics demonstrated in cognitive processing tasks may find a parallel in perceptual tasks using visual stimuli suggests that there is scope for further study of the generaliza- bility of these heuristics. One area for future research is to identify the extent to which other commonly used heuristic strategies apply to the perceptual domain.

Other issues of relevance to marketers involve how visual information is represented in memory and whether such representation affects spatial judgments, how people categorize spatial information and the implications of such categorization on judgments, how the use of color and layout affects estimates of area, and whether there is an affective aspect to spatial configurations, with some configurations being preferred to others.

[Received March 1994. Revised January 1996. Brian Sternthal served as editor and Joseph W. Alba served

as associate editor for this article.]


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