"How you perceive directions depends on the kind of setting you live in."
A study published in The Journal of Environmental Psychology researched how people understand spatial navigation. Researchers recruited participants from the Netherlands and from the American Midwest, and asked both to provide directions within a fictional neighborhood. Americans were much more likely to rely on street names or cardinal directions, while the Dutch participants relied on landmarks and left or right turns. This is consistent with the cultures that the participants hailed from, given the irregular layout of European cities compared with the more regular layouts of Midwest cities.
