The Effect of Letter versus Number Cues on Distance Perception

People experience the world through distance perceptions, such as perceiving distance when moving through store aisles, locating movie theater seats, spotting parking spaces, or navigating airport gates. The distance can be perceived using letter (e.g., qualitative) or number (e.g., quantitative) cues. In this research, we focus on how the type of cues can influence consumers’ distance perceptions and affect their everyday judgments. Specifically, we suggest that in pre-task estimates (referred to as the pre-action stage), letter cues lead to lesser distance perceptions. However, in post-task estimates (referred to as the post-action stage), letter cues lead to greater distance perceptions. We explain the result pattern in the pre-action stage using naive beliefs about the ease of computation and magnitude judgments (i.e., computational fluency). In the post-action stage, we propose that expectation–disconfirmation causes such a reversal in distance perceptions. We test the proposed patterns of results and theoretical accounts across two lab studies and two field studies