If you want to fail, simply have lots and lots of choices: Hicks’ Law Revisited

When learning skills and ingraining them as muscle memory or autopilot responses, it is important that only one way be taught. W.E. Hicks’ 1952 study found that as possible responses increased from one to two, reaction time increased by 58 percent. In other words, having to choose between options takes time, and the more options you have, the greater the reaction time. This is often referred to as “Hicks’ Law“, but Sun Tzu said the same thing many centuries ago: “The more possibilities you present to the enemy, the more diffuse he is forced to become. The more diffuse he becomes, the more difficult it is for him to concentrate sufficiently to make a successful attack.” … Thus, a simple set of skills, combined with an emphasis on actions requiring complex and gross motor muscle operations (as opposed to fine-motor control), all extensively rehearsed, allows for extraordinary performance levels under stress. 

The above is an excerpt from Dave Grossman‘s On Combat book. My brother is a police officer outside of Atlanta, and his area of expertise (keeping the peace) is very different from mine (performance enhancement). However, this book sort of brought our two professional worlds together. He loaned it to me, and although it’s taken close to two years to read the first seventy pages, I’m finally into it and discovering some really interesting parallel’s between sport/exercise and police work/combat (so expect additional posts in the future regarding other interesting tidbits from this book).

Let’s focus on one particular line in this quote: “… having to choose between options takes time, and the more options you have, the greater the reaction time.” This is great stuff for coaches to remember – if you want your athletes to fail, simply give them lots and lots of choices. The same can be said for commanding officers and their soldiers, or even parents and their children. For example, I’ve noticed this phenomenon with my (almost) five-year-old son, Malachi. If he wants to eat some cereal for breakfast, I might say, “Malachi, do you want Life, Cheerios, Rice Krispies, or Kix?” He takes an extraordinarily long time to answer. Sometimes that’s frustrating to me because I just want to grab a box of cereal out of the pantry and be done with it. But it takes his little brain a (relatively) massive amount of time to sort through all of those options and determine which cereal to choose. When he is presented with only two options, his answer is much quicker and usually more confident.

You’ve seen this play itself out in sports: All baseball stadiums have eliminated any color or movement from the outfield wall directly behind the pitcher’s mound. Why? The batter has a hard enough time trying to detect the baseball coming out of the pitcher’s hand and determining if he should swing or not and doesn’t need additional stimuli from centerfield. Think of the basketball free throw, as illustrated in the photo. The additional stimulus of the fat man doing the hula might distract the shooter, giving him additional things to think about which might compromise his shot.

Obviously, choosing a cereal (or a TV show, or a movie, or which toy to play with, or which t-shirt to wear) is of very low consequence. Nothing of value is lost because of a delay in reaction. But what if the setting is more important? And it’s good to note that “importance” is a relative term: a sport event is more important than cereal; a police officer deciding whether he should shoot or not is MUCH more important than a sport event. Hick’s Law doesn’t discuss this, but I wonder if the relative level of importance also plays a role in one’s ability to maximize reaction time.

The bottom line is this: when it comes to providing multiple options in which a quick reaction is desired, use the KISS method – keep it simple. The best way to keep it simple is to actively manage (i.e, minimize) the number of options that are available. And keep this in mind: you perform like you practice. So if you practice, whether as an athlete, police officer, fireman, etc., using the KISS method but then the expectation during performance is that you’ll be able to manage multiple, often conflicting, options, your chances of successfully completing the performance are drastically reduced. Keep it simple and practice like you’ll performance.

What do you think?

An example of poor reaction time. Did too many stimuli play a role?

Related articles

• How the brain plans, executes movement to a ‘go’ signal (news.bioscholar.com)
• Think fast: The neural circuitry of reaction time (esciencenews.com)