Estimation of distance and Preferred State Theory

This paper describes the application of Preferred State Theory to provide quantitative predictions of a variety of psychological effects, including the prothetic-metathetic distinction, and the expected form of the matching functions between physical stimuli and the estimates produced by magnitude and category subjective estimation methods. The subjective distance from a midwestern university campus to each of 24 American cities was judged by 157 male and female undergraduates. It was hypothesized on the basis of the theory that subjects would process short geographical distances as a metathetic continuum and longer distances as a prothetic continuum. This hypothesis was supported for the method of category judgments but not for the method of magnitude estimation. Based on the theory, the matching functions between physical and subjective distances for short distances were expected to be more nearly linear than for long distances for both judgment methods. The data do not support this hypothesis for either method.