* When North Is Up: Scientific Finding about a Defect in Our Information Processing, and a Comment from Me
Here’s an item from the “Health and Science” section of the July 2-9 issue of THE WEEK. A comment from me will follow:
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When north is up
North is not “up” and south is not “down”… right? Try convincing the average traveler. In a recent experiment, volunteers were shown maps and asked to choose the shortest route among several that were actually of identical length. The subjects showed an unconscious preference for southerly routes –in part, researchers believe, because they perceive them as going “downhill” and therefore easier. On average, the subjects estimated an 800-mile drive would go faster –abuot 100 minutes quicker– if driven north to south rather than vice versa. When asked to explain, the subjects said they expected northern routes to be more scenic and demand more energy than southern routes– indicatinga belief that northern routes required climbing into higher elevations. So beware the assumption that “north is up,” Tufts University researcher Tad Brunye tells SCIENCE NEWS– it will lead to mistakes in picking routes and estimating travel time.
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Schmookler Commentary:
In former times, I’d have read such an item with interest and with pleasure. No other particular feeling. Now, I find, these interesting findings feed into my worries about our species.
It’s because there is so much other evidence, abundantly strewn across our political and cultural landscape, that large numbers of people can be led astray by all sorts of anti-rational factors in their processing of all sorts of information.
So here it turns out that your “average traveler” cannot separate, in their information processing, the vertical dimension of a map from the land the map depicts. Is it any wonder that people can be led astray in all sorts of other ways, like by the flags waved by politicians who are anything but patriots, like by the chanting of phrases such as “death panels” that correspond to nothing in the actual world, like by smears and innuendos and arguments that lack logical consistency?
So, I still find the results of the research, above, interesting. And I like reading about all the nifty ways we’ve been wired to be other than clear mirrors of actual reality. But I was interested, upon reading this, to see how my own processing of recent information –regarding the fragility of human rationality and its contribution to the fragility of American democracy– has added a note of distress to my response to this scientific report.
One of the by-products of traumatic experience, I would surmise.
July 1st, 2010 at 6:31 pm
There is a worry, that our species is a `Maybe`, in terms of survival: what is our purpose and where are we going? I`m sure that this distress cannot depress a person like you, so I recommend some fiction on the theme of human destiny based on our memory of past events. “A Clean Escape”, starring Sam Waterson . Judy Davis . Hosted by Steven Hawking. The President of the United States has his own psychiatrist. She could not save the world from arctic winter or herself but, the president made a `Clean Escape.
July 1st, 2010 at 7:22 pm
No surprise gut decision making is not “rational” – is that contrary to recent “wisdom”? Does that crash your rickety edifice of market “intelligence”?
That always was dubious.
What about those studies which showed that simply reminding people to think rationally made them more so? Did the experimental context bias these results? Or what about the simple wisdom that expertise requires practice?
And what about the apparent irrationality of the researcher? Round trip estimations are probably not so much affected so the erroneous picking of optimal routes should probably not be much of a concern.
July 1st, 2010 at 8:02 pm
An IMO accessible article which surveys major cognitive illusions:
http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/wcp/wcasp/clips/modules/documents/nicholls.pdf
The domain of application is meteorology and climate, so there maybe something of a tie-in to another recent thread. But the part of the article which surveys major cognitive illusions is IMO topical for this thread.
July 2nd, 2010 at 9:16 am
Thanks, ToddR, concentration is lessening with some and remains stable with others. Illusions are followed by some and recognized by others and neither condition is seen in the remainder. We cannot generalize about humans, they are diverse, and while culture is disintegrating there will always be someone to pick up the flag.
July 2nd, 2010 at 2:53 pm
Didn’t look at the specific routes that the survey proposed to the subjects. However, having driven many times on east-west routes in the US, especially involving the western states, the ones that indeed HAVE presented more crossings of mountain ranges, and/or threat of icy conditions (several of my trips being in winter), have been the ones in the more northern latitudes. I might well have answered with the misperceivers and gone south.
The route that caravans took to reach California and Oregon, both involved South Pass (elev. only 7550 ft.), a little-recognized broad low area in Western Wyoming that gets one over the continental divide without taking a steep, treacherous path. So, there is a northern route superior to trying to hit the west coast driving, say, due west from Denver (which traverses a couple of doozies of high passes).
Had to drive from Phoenix to western New York state one winter, and chose a southerly route (Dallas, Richmond, D.C., Harrisburg) in order to avoid possible winter conditions. I knew that that was a longer route in miles, but safer in my situation. Perhaps psychologically that translates into “shorter.”
July 3rd, 2010 at 3:36 pm
I was thinking about when I used to fly a lot from New York to Germany. One way, and I think it was the way east, (not entirely sure) always took an hour less time because of the wind backup, to fly the distance.
Not sure how this relates, KAT
July 3rd, 2010 at 3:57 pm
PS: I am now pretty sure it was going back, and home to the west, that was the shorter trip. yes, I am almost sure.