The well travelled road effect is a

cognitive bias A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own "subjective reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of reality, not the objective input, m ...

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. The effect has been observed for centuries but was first studied scientifically in the 1980s and 1990s following from earlier "heuristics and biases" work undertaken by

Daniel Kahneman Daniel Kahneman (; he, דניאל כהנמן; born March 5, 1934) is an Israeli-American psychologist and economist notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making, as well as behavioral economics, for which he was award ...

and

Amos Tversky Amos Nathan Tversky ( he, עמוס טברסקי; March 16, 1937 – June 2, 1996) was an Israeli cognitive and mathematical psychologist and a key figure in the discovery of systematic human cognitive bias and handling of risk. Much of his ...

. Much like the

Stroop task ---- ---- Naming the font color of a printed word is an easier and quicker task if word meaning and font color are congruent. If two words are both printed in red, the average time to say "red" in response to the written word "green" is ...

, it is hypothesised that drivers use less cognitive effort when traversing familiar routes and therefore underestimate the time taken to traverse the familiar route. The well travelled road effect has been hypothesised as a reason that self-reported experience curve effects are overestimated.

References

{{reflist, refs= {{cite journal, last1=Allan, first1=Lorraine G., title=The perception of time, journal=Perception & Psychophysics, date=1979, volume=26, issue=5, pages=340–354, doi=10.3758/BF03204158, doi-access=free {{cite journal, last1=Jackson, first1=W. Burke, last2=Jucker, first2=James V., title=An Empirical Study of Travel Time Variability and Travel Choice Behavior, journal=Transportation Science, date=1982, volume=16, issue=4, pages=460–475, doi=10.1287/trsc.16.4.460 {{cite journal, last1=Rubia, first1=K, last2=Smith, first2=A, title=The neural correlates of cognitive time management: a review, journal=Acta Neurobiologiae Experimentalis, date=2004, volume=64, issue=3, pages=329–40, pmid=15283476 {{cite journal, last1=Zakay, first1=Dan, last2=Fallach, first2=Eli, title=Immediate and remote time estimation — A comparison, journal=Acta Psychologica, date=1984, volume=57, issue=1, pages=69–81, doi=10.1016/0001-6918(84)90054-4, pmid=6507128 {{cite journal, last1=Zakay, first1=D, last2=Block, first2=RA, title=Prospective and retrospective duration judgments: an executive-control perspective, journal=Acta Neurobiologiae Experimentalis, date=2004, volume=64, issue=3, pages=319–28, pmid=15283475 , url=http://ane.pl/pdf/6430.pdf, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160524221159/http://ane.pl/pdf/6430.pdf, archive-date=2016-05-24 Stroop Task
--> Cognitive biases

See also

References