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Estimating National Populations: Cross-Cultural Differences and Availability Effects

SUMMARY Estimates of national population were studied in two experiments. In Experiment 1, Canadian and Chinese undergraduates rated their knowledge of 112 countries and then estimated the population of each. In Experiment 2, Canadians rated their knowledge of 52 countries and then provided population estimates for these primed countries and for a comparable set of 52 unprimed countries. In Experiment 1, participants from both nations produced estimates that resembled those obtained from Americans in prior studies (Brown and Siegler, 1992, 1993, 1996, 2001). However, there were several reliable cross-national differences in performance which appear to reflect cross-cultural differences in task-relevant naive domain knowledge. In addition, both experiments produced findings consistent with the claim that availability-based intuitions play an important role in this task. In Experiment 1, cross-national differences in rated knowledge predicted cross-national differences in estimated population; in Experiment 2, primed country names elicited larger population estimates than unprimed country names. We conclude by arguing for the general utility of this hybrid approach to real-world estimation. Copyright # 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.