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Verification of MPG Illusion When Fuel Efficiency Is Expressed by km/l
Atsuo Murata
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5542/2016.06.001
Okayama University, Okayama, Japan
We conducted three questionnaire surveys to test whether people are get trapped in MPG illusion and falsely reason the reduction in gas consumption on the basis of the linear relationship between fuel efficiency and reduction in gas consumption. The MPG illusion corresponds to a cognitive bias in judging fuel efficiency when it is expressed as miles per gallon used in US. We misunderstand that the amount of gas consumed by an automobile decreases as a linear function of automobile’s MPG, although the actual relationship is curvilinear. We made an attempt to confirm whether this illusion is also true for Japanese people, and it was investigated whether cross cultural difference exists in the MPG illusion (km per liter was used instead of MPG, because Japanese people are generally accustomed to not MPG but km per liter). The following findings were obtained as a result of three questionnaire surveys. The participants misunderstood that the larger change of km/l linearly led to the larger reduction in gas consumption, although the relationship is actually curvilinear. The MPG illusion was observed for both US and Japanese people, and no cross cultural difference was detected concerning this type of cognitive bias. The MPG illusion (bias) was effectively removed by replacing distance-over-volume measures such as km/l or MPG by volume-over-distance measures such as l/km or GPM.
cross-cultural difference, cognitive bias, MPG, km/l, l/km, debiasing
Atsuo Murata. (2016). Verification of MPG Illusion When Fuel Efficiency Is Expressed by km/l. Psychology Research, 6(6), 319-326.
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