As the Crow Flies: Bias in Consumers' Map-Based Distance Judgments

ing 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