Why the bad guys are always bad shots….

Posted by Greg Laden on February 5, 2010
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…. because they always shoot first! And it turns out that reaction is faster than action, so the Marshall can shoot the Varmint Bad Guy, and the Sar Wars Storm Troopers didn’t have a chance.

[Niels] Bohr was seemingly unhappy with the Tinseltown explanation that the good guy, who never shoots first, always wins. Legend has it that he procured two toy pistols and enlisted the aid of fellow physicist George Gamow. In a series of duels, Bohr never drew first but won every time. The physicist suggested that the brain responded to danger faster than it carried out a deliberate intention.

source


And now modern researchers have published a paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society B that confirms these results.

From the abstract:

Everyday behaviour involves a trade-off between planned actions and reaction to environmental events. Evidence from neurophysiology, neurology and functional brain imaging suggests different neural bases for the control of different movement types. Here we develop a behavioural paradigm to test movement dynamics for intentional versus reaction movements and provide evidence for a ‘reactive advantage’ in movement execution, whereby the same action is executed faster in reaction to an opponent. We placed pairs of participants in competition with each other to make a series of button presses. Within-subject analysis of movement times revealed a 10 per cent benefit for reactive actions. This was maintained when opponents performed dissimilar actions, and when participants competed against a computer, suggesting that the effect is not related to facilitation produced by action observation. Rather, faster ballistic movements may be a general property of reactive motor control, potentially providing a useful means of promoting survival.

There are exceptions, of course. For instance, as we all know, Han shot first. Right?

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  1. #1 MadScientist
    February 5, 2010

    Whoa – 10% ‘benefit’ on the *reaction time*. This means that if your visual reaction time is 0.2s (fairly typical but sports people can do much better), if you have a bad guy in the picture your reaction time can go to 0.18s. You’re still the one shot first (if the bad guy can shoot straight). Of course if you get the bad guy between the eyes and he/she gets you in the leg, you still win.

    Alternatively you can just practice a lot to bring your reaction time down and (unless you already have a very short reaction time) you’ll get much better than a 10% improvement.

    Conclusion: some people can improve their reaction times.

  2. #2 José
    February 5, 2010

    Now tell me what Star Wars Storm Trooper Armor does? My research shows that it’s purely decorative and actually amplifies the effect of blasters.

  3. #3 Sam N
    February 6, 2010

    I wouldn’t call it increased reaction time, I would call it increased velocity of ballistic movement at the expense of accuracy (I’m pretty sure I read there were more errors with reaction). The measurement of time to initiate the movement isn’t really possible to measure given the randomized imposed waiting period.

    I would be curious to see this done with something like saccades, where the ballistic velocity profile isn’t really under conscious control. My hypothesis would be no effect, but it might provide some insight into how this is occurring physiologically.

  4. #4 Greg Laden
    February 6, 2010

    Everyone has overlooked the obvious explanation.

    All aggression is passive aggression. The initiator lets the “victim” shoot him.

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    February 7, 2010

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