Distances And Biases

Hi all,

So I read this article on biases that people develop the longer they are associated with a place or group. It was interesting to see how people can even askew something so basic as distances with their biases.

The article:
http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2011/01/spatial-memory.html

The article was talking about students attending Northwestern. Freshmen and Seniors were compared in their biases and how far they considered different parts of the campus to be. The findings were pretty interesting.

Looking at the information given here, it makes me reflect onto myself how this might have affected me here at Pratt. Just earlier today I went to the C-Store and I remember thinking to myself how far away it was from ELJ. Maybe this was my bias in thinking back to when I lived in Whilloughby and how different it is from ELJ, and my brain may have set up a strong distinction between the two buildings.

How would this help evolutionarily? Maybe early man had to make clear distinctions between landmarks to travel from place to place? And maybe it's better to think that going from one place to another would take more time than to think it will take less time.


-Eric Chung