When you live in a certain place for some time, it starts to affect the way you look at the world. Your town, your city, becomes your point of reference and it comes to represent what is "normal."
It tends to be a gradual and subtle process and it affects everybody, regardless of age or education.
Experts in spatial cognition argue that it is a natural bias: There is no such thing as a view from nowhere.
The research also underscores the powerful role of "mental" maps in people's views of the world and of their place in the world. It is important to appreciate the subtle nature of this bias: It is not so much about people not being aware of where they are.
The point is that most people naturally underestimate how their place influences their world views and general mind-sets.
The most effective way of becoming aware of your own place-based biases is to travel to other places. And the 'best' places to visit are those that stand in contrast to your home and that, in some fashion, hold out a mirror.
One of the best places to visit by Miamians, for this purpose, is Washington, D.C.
At least, these were my thoughts this week as I strolled along the Mall in the center of the city.
No, not a shopping mall (for those with an extreme Miami-bias), but the monumental area stretching almost two miles from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial.
This is where the United States of America is most dramatically and effectively symbolized. Nowhere else can you find a greater density of national monuments: war memorials, national museums and botanical gardens, statues of national heroes, and, of course, just north of the Mall, the White House.
If Miami is on the edge of the United States, Washington's Mall is at the very heart. And traveling from Miami to D.C., like no other destination, makes you feel like you are traveling to the United States, from abroad.
The contrasts between the two cities are stark.
Washington is the country's geopolitical nerve center, Miami its most remote frontier-city. Washington is the most established city in the nation and Miami is the most transient.
The Washington elite represent "old money" and Miami is dominated by the nouveaux riches.
Political life in Washington is the most highly organized and institutionalized in the United States while Miami's body politic, for a city this size, is one of the most immature in the country.
And, perhaps most importantly, Washington symbolizes the nation while Miami symbolizes globalization and hemispheric integration.
Both Washington and Miami are world cities, but different kinds. Obviously, Washington is one of the most important command centers in the world when it comes to politics and diplomacy.
And Washington's urban landscape is highly globalized in terms of the presence of embassies, foreign lobbying organizations and huge numbers of foreign residents.
In Miami we have WorldCity but in D.C. they have The Washington Diplomat.
Washington is not an economic world city like New York or even Frankfurt or Miami. It is in a category of political and symbolic world cities such as Berlin, Rome (the Vatican), and Jerusalem.
What is bound to strike visitors to the Mall area the most, even if it is not your first visit, is the overwhelming power that emanates from these symbols of nationhood, identity and patriotism.
The landscape of this part of Washington tells the story of this exceptional country, and it does so with conviction, emotion and grace.
When you visit these sites in D.C., Miami feels very far away. You realize how little of that sense of nationhood and national identity, that is so powerfully expressed in Washington's monuments, reaches all the way down to South Florida.
And you wonder how many Miamians have ever made it to D.C. If you have not gone for the past 10 years or so, perhaps you should consider whether it is time for a reality check.
Jan Nijman is professor of Geography and Regional Studies at the University of Miami.