Ever since cowboys first swaggered onto the silver screen, scientists have been struggling to solve a conundrum. Why do the bad guys always get shot in a gunfight when they’re the ones who reached for their guns first?
The Nobel laureate and quantum physicist Niels Bohr was so intrigued with the puzzle he came up with a theory: the one who draws second moves faster because he reacts without thinking.
Research by psychologists at Birmingham University has shown that Bohr was right, at least up to a point. In mock gunfights, volunteers were 10% faster when they drew second than when they made the first move.
One of the researchers, experimental psychologist Andrew Welchman, said our brains seem to be wired up in a way that makes reactions faster than conscious thought.
“In our everyday lives, some of the movements we make come about because we decide to make them, while others are forced on us by reacting to events. Bohr’s suggestion reflects this everyday intuition. We wanted to know if there was evidence for these reactive movements being swifter than the equivalent proactive ones,” Welchman said.
However, the research suggests that for gunslingers chivalry is not the secret to a longer life. Welchman’s study found that while a gunslinger moved faster when they drew second, the difference was on average only 21 milliseconds — too slow to beat someone who had already pulled a gun.
“You move faster if you draw second, but you’re still going to die,” Dr Welchman said. “You’ll die satisfied that you were quicker, but that’s not much use to you.”
Niels Bohr, who worked on the structure of the atom at the beginning of the 20th century, tested his theory by staging his own mock duels with toy guns at his institute in Copenhagen. His gunslinging partner, the Russian-born George Gamow, drew first and lost every time.
“[Bohr] can’t have won because he was quicker in reacting,” Welchman said. “It must be that he was a really good shot as well as a really good physicist.”
The study is published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society.
The researchers simulated gunfights by sitting volunteers opposite each other and asking them to hit a sequence of buttons as soon as the other person moved. They then looked at which was faster overall: initiating the “gunfight” or reacting.
“As a general strategy for survival, having this system in our brains that gives us quick-and-dirty responses to the environment seems pretty useful. It probably wouldn’t save you in a Wild West duel 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.
The research suggests there might be two different circuits in the brain, one for reacting to an external stimulus and the other for starting movements.
Some evidence for this is seen in people with Parkinson’s disease who can find intentional movements far more difficult than reactive ones. The study suggests it might be possible to develop strategies to ease movement in such patients. – guardian.co.uk