Bridging the Gap Between Friends: How Presence Biases Distance Estimation

• Social relationships are commonly described in terms of physical space.1 • When drawing simple routes on maps, people draw paths closer to friends than strangers.2 • Americans overestimate the distance to cities outside the borders of the United States.3 • Inclusive social group words like “we” and “us” facilitate spatial location verification when attached to items shown proximately to a viewer; the opposite pattern is observed for exclusive words like “others” and “them”.4 • This work addresses the relationship between social presence and distance estimation.