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byrnema comments on Humans are not automatically strategic - Less Wrong
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I think you're underestimating the average person.
I might well be. Given the value of empiricism-type virtues, anyone want to go test it (by creating an operationalized notion of what it is to understand the heuristics, and then finding randomly choosing several people independently from e.g. your local grocery store and testing it on them), and let us know the results?
Jasen Murray and Marcello and I tried this the other day concerning what portion of native English speaking American adults know what a "sphere" is ("a ball" or "orange-shaped" count; "a circle" doesn't), and found that of the five we sampled, three knew and two didn't.
My estimate would be far on the other side: I think at least 95% of the population could understand and agree with those heuristics. I pay less attention to what people say they understand, and look at what they do, and am usually impressed by how intelligent people are -- in ways academic tests would not typically fully measure.
.. I think only 5% could compose these heuristics, if asked to. And only half of 1% could know to compose them, without being told to...
Regarding your study, I'm not sure what you could deduce other than that 'sphere' is not in common usage, at least not as the geometric object. (For example, any 4 year old child can distinguish a sphere from other shapes, and then 'sphere' is just a label.)
Perhaps 'sphere of influence' is heard slightly more frequently than sphere as a geometric object. I would expect that the former connotation, if superseding the geometric one, would result in a little confusion and waving of hands, since it is so abstract.