List two similarities and two differences for cultures in North America

rich and complex set of research issues (Bailenson, Shum,

Atran, Medin, & Coley, 2002; Medin, Ross, Atran, Bur-

nett, & Blok, 2002). In the present article, we examine

some of these in the context of judgments about global

geography. Specifically, we address how some biases in

global location judgments can be attributed to the cat-

egorical nature of geographical representations and the

processes that use them, whereas others are attributable to

cultural asymmetries in geographical knowledge.

Our previous research with Canadian participants

(Friedman & Brown, 2000a, 2000b; Friedman, Brown, &

McGaffey, 2002) indicated that their location estimates for

cities in the old and new worlds were based on a category-

driven system of plausible reasoning (Collins & Michal-

ski, 1989). Geographic categories were psychologically

distinct regions that could be independently influenced

by new information. Some countries had more than one

region, and some regions comprised either one or several

countries. The plausible reasoning framework assumes

that biases in judgments about global locations are mul-

tiply determined because they are influenced by accurate

and inaccurate beliefs about geographic regions acquired

over the lifespan from a variety of sources.

The key features of the data (Friedman & Brown, 2000a,

2000b) were that (1) Canadian participants divided North

America into four distinct regions (Canada, the northern

U.S., the southern U.S., and Mexico), (2) there were usu-

ally large boundary zones (gaps) between regions, (3) there

was little north–south discrimination among the estimates

within most regions, and (4) the estimates became more

biased as the cities’ actual locations were farther south.

Indeed, the average location estimate for most Mexican

cities was near the equator, which was an error of approxi-

mately 1,500 miles.

These four observations are consistent with the influ-

ence of categorical information on location estimates

(Brown, 2002; Friedman