This is a strange behavior that I noticed in myself first, then I allowed people I was walking with to lead the way and noticed it generally applied to them as well. As with most things on this blog, I do not have enough data to make confident conclusions on this matter; I’m simply sharing what I’ve noticed in my observations.
When people walk between destinations, there are always multiple routes that they can take; one may be quicker, but another could be more scenic, and still another may pass by a coffee shop or some other destination of interest. If we look at a case where people are simply trying to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible, we would think that they would take the shortest path possible. In this case, barring the possibility that multiple equidistant paths exist, they should take the same path from A to B as from B to A. This is where I noticed something odd: People will often take a different walking path between two points depending on the direction they’re going. This is particularly surprising for walking paths (as opposed to driving) because it doesn’t have factors like speed limit or one-way streets that would alter the path taken.
To explain what I’ve noticed, I have a map with destination points labelled:
The black lines indicate walking paths. Imagine you are walking from point A to point B, and there are no external factors like cool views to alter your path. Now, with a clear mind, do the same thing, but from B to A. If you’re like me, the paths you took are different, and they look like so:
The orange line signifies the path from A to B, and similarly the blue line signifies the path from B to A. Notice how they are not the same. In this particular example, the fact that they are different isn’t all that unusual because both paths end up being the same distance. When things get weird is when there actually is a fastest path, but people only take it going one way. Below is a different map with the two paths already marked. In this case there is one path that is definitely shortest, but it isn’t the way some would be inclined to walk:
When looking at a map, it is clear that the orange path is the correct one to take. When walking in real life, some people might take the orange path when they go from B to A, but I know I wouldn’t, and have noticed that most people tend not to either.
The best reasoning I have been able to come up with as to why this would happen is that people have a stronger sense of direction than they may think. When explaining this idea to others I was asked to define what I thought sense of direction meant, so I defined it as “One’s understanding of where they are relative to where they need to be.” I think that, without even realizing it, people think about the most direct path there is between them and their destination – a straight line – and seek the closest path to that. To illustrate this, I added a dashed grey line to indicate the direct path – the way the crow flies, as they say.
The curved lines with arrows in the above map denote which path is closest to the direct line. If someone is standing at B and wants to get to A, their mind thinks of the dashed grey path and seeks the path that is closest to being in that direction, which is the blue path. Obviously, if the blue path lead to a dead end or went extremely out of the way then people wouldn’t take it even if it is initially closest to the direct path. In cases like the one above, however, when the blue path is simply a little bit longer, many people do in fact take the longer path, and I think that is because the initial leg is closest to the direction they ultimately want to end up going.
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