How Good Is Your Sense of Direction?
Why some people always know where north is and others get lost leaving the car park
People are surprisingly accurate when they rate their own sense of direction: in the research behind this test, what people said about themselves lined up with how well they actually kept track of where they were while moving through real buildings and streets. But a single score hides how you find your way - by holding a map in your head, or by following a chain of turns and landmarks - and how you feel when the landmarks run out.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
Think about finding your way on foot or by car without a phone telling you where to turn.
What it measures
Your self-rated sense of direction, as measured by the Santa Barbara scale, plus three related things from wayfinding research: how much you use an orientation strategy (keeping track of your position relative to landmarks and compass directions), how much you rely on a route strategy (step-by-step turns), and how calm you stay when finding your way somewhere new.
Based on: Santa Barbara Sense of Direction Scale (Hegarty, Richardson, Montello, Lovelace & Subbiah, 2002)
Possible results
Sense of direction
How well you judge you can keep track of where you are and where things are.
Orientation strategy
Whether you keep a map in your head, using landmarks and compass directions.
Route strategy
How much you rely on a sequence of turns and landmarks.
Ease in unfamiliar places
How calm you stay when you have to find your way somewhere new.
Common questions
Are men better at navigation than women?
On average the differences are modest and much of them concern method and confidence. Lawton found that men more often reported an orientation strategy and women more often a route strategy, and that women reported more spatial anxiety - which itself went with using the orientation strategy less. Anxiety and practice explain a good part of the gap, and individual differences within each sex are far larger than the average difference between them.
Is sense of direction the same as spatial intelligence?
Not really. Hegarty and colleagues built the scale to capture environmental spatial ability - finding your way through large spaces - which research treats as partly separate from the small-scale skill measured by paper-and-pencil tests such as rotating shapes in your head. The scale related best to tasks that involve updating your position as you move. Being good at spatial puzzles and being good at finding your way through a city are overlapping but distinct abilities.
Can I improve my sense of direction?
Yes, mostly by changing habits rather than by training a talent. Walking instead of taking underground transport, noting big reference points before you set off, glancing at a map of the whole area rather than only following the turn-by-turn arrow, and deliberately guessing directions and then checking all give your brain the practice that navigation apps take away.
Sources
- Hegarty, M., Richardson, A. E., Montello, D. R., Lovelace, K., & Subbiah, I. (2002). Development of a self-report measure of environmental spatial ability. Intelligence. doi:10.1016/S0160-2896(02)00116-2
- Lawton, C. A. (1994). Gender differences in way-finding strategies: Relationship to spatial ability and spatial anxiety. Sex Roles. doi:10.1007/BF01544230
An honest note The items are Quinthea's own wording adapted from the Santa Barbara Sense of Direction Scale, so scores are not comparable to published norms. Only the first bar corresponds to that scale, which gives a single score; orientation strategy, route strategy and ease in unfamiliar places come from Lawton's wayfinding research and are related constructs, not validated factors of it. Both instruments were developed mainly with American university students, and self-reports capture confidence as well as skill. Nothing here measures intelligence.