Maps in classrooms and on websites often use the Mercator projection, which distorts size. The largest example is Greenland, which looks bigger than Africa on these maps. But in reality, Africa is about fourteen times bigger. This happens because the Mercator map stretches areas near the poles. Researchers studied over 130,000 people worldwide in a new study titled “The Influence of Map Projections on People’s Global-Scale Cognitive Map: A Worldwide Study,” published by MDPI. They compared how people estimated country sizes with different map types and a real globe. The study confirmed that while maps distort size due to Earth's round shape, people's size guesses are more influenced by psychological bias. Small countries like Japan are often overestimated, while large countries like the US are underestimated. Interestingly, knowing different map types like the Robinson or Gall–Peters projections did not improve size estimates. This suggests our mental map is shaped by various experiences instead of one single map image. The Mercator projection remains common in media and education because it preserves direction, but at the cost of size distortion. The study highlights these distortions are a result of math and geometry, not deception. Even so, our minds tend to soften the distortions we see on flat maps.