Distorted cognitive maps: college students' misperceptions of nation size.
On a questionnaire 256 college students reported a number of distorted views concerning the sizes of nations in the world and these distortions appeared to generalize to geographic regions. Considering that individual cognitive maps are commonly used to assess new information about the global environment, these inherent distortions could significantly bias the students' views of the world.
D003071:Cognition; D005843:Geography; D006801:Humans; D008377:Maps as Topic; D012858:Size Perception