ON THE SENSITIVITY OF CONCLUSIONS ABOUT THE BASES OF COGNITIVE DISTANCE

The “ecological fallacy’ inherent in two studies of the correlation of cognitive distance with objective distance and travel time is considered. The studies reach opposite conclusions using similar types of data, but both involve different types of aggregation of cognitive-distance judgments. It is shown that, under certain circumstances, correlations based on aggregate data can lead to reverse conclusions to those based on more behaviorally valid disaggregate data. Hence such aggregation is unjustifiable and, as a result, neither study's conclusions can be relied upon.