People move faster if they are reacting

BIRMINGHAM, England, Feb. 4 (UPI) -- People move faster when they react to something in their environment than when they initiate the action ourselves, researchers in Britain found.

Dr. Andrew Welchman of the University of Birmingham and colleagues said in everyday lives, some of the movements people make are the result of decisions to move, while others are reactive.

"We set up a competition between two people who were challenged to press a row of buttons faster than their opponent," Welchman said in a statement.

"There was no 'go' signal so all they had to go by was either their own intention to move or a reaction to their opponent -- just like in the gunslingers legend -- where the man who draws his gun first is the one to get shot at -- just like in the gunslingers legend."

The study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, found that the participants who reacted to their opponent executed the movement on average 21 milliseconds faster than those who initiated the movement.

"Twenty-one milliseconds may seem like a tiny difference and it probably wouldn't save you in a Wild West dual because your brain takes around 200 milliseconds to respond to what your opponent is doing, but it could mean the difference between life and death when you are trying to avoid an oncoming bus," Welchman said.