Well travelled road effect
Encyclopedia
The well travelled road effect is a cognitive bias
in which travellers will estimate the time taken to traverse routes differently depending on their familiarity with the route. Frequently travelled routes are assessed as taking a shorter time than unfamiliar routes. This effect creates errors when estimating the most efficient route to an unfamiliar destination, when one candidate route includes a familiar route, whilst the other candidate route includes no familiar routes. The effect is most salient when subjects are driving, but is still detectable for pedestrians and users of public transport. Much like the Stroop Task it is hypothesised that drivers use less cognitive effort when traversing familiar routes and therefore under-estimate the time taken to traverse the familiar route. The effect has been observed for centuries but was first studied scientifically in the 1980s and '90s following from earlier fallacy work undertaken by Kahneman and Tversky. The well travelled road effect has been hypothesised as a reason that self-reported experience curve effects are overestimated (see Experience curve effects
).
Cognitive bias
A cognitive bias is a pattern of deviation in judgment that occurs in particular situations. Implicit in the concept of a "pattern of deviation" is a standard of comparison; this may be the judgment of people outside those particular situations, or may be a set of independently verifiable...
in which travellers will estimate the time taken to traverse routes differently depending on their familiarity with the route. Frequently travelled routes are assessed as taking a shorter time than unfamiliar routes. This effect creates errors when estimating the most efficient route to an unfamiliar destination, when one candidate route includes a familiar route, whilst the other candidate route includes no familiar routes. The effect is most salient when subjects are driving, but is still detectable for pedestrians and users of public transport. Much like the Stroop Task it is hypothesised that drivers use less cognitive effort when traversing familiar routes and therefore under-estimate the time taken to traverse the familiar route. The effect has been observed for centuries but was first studied scientifically in the 1980s and '90s following from earlier fallacy work undertaken by Kahneman and Tversky. The well travelled road effect has been hypothesised as a reason that self-reported experience curve effects are overestimated (see Experience curve effects
Experience curve effects
Models of the learning curve effect and the closely related experience curve effect express the relationship between equations for experience and efficiency or between efficiency gains and investment in the effort....
).
See also
- Availability heuristicAvailability heuristicThe availability heuristic is a phenomenon in which people predict the frequency of an event, or a proportion within a population, based on how easily an example can be brought to mind....
- Accuracy and precisionAccuracy and precisionIn the fields of science, engineering, industry and statistics, the accuracy of a measurement system is the degree of closeness of measurements of a quantity to that quantity's actual value. The precision of a measurement system, also called reproducibility or repeatability, is the degree to which...
- List of cognitive biases
- Weber–Fechner lawWeber–Fechner lawThe Weber–Fechner law is a confusing term, because it combines two different laws. Some authors use the term to mean Weber's law, and others Fechner's law. Fechner himself added confusion to the literature by calling his own law Weber's law...