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Abstract

In the Wild West, legend has it that the guy who draws his gun rst is the one who gets shot. The idea behind this is that intentional actions are slower to execute than reactive actions. To
see if there is any truth in this notion we staged mock duels in the laboratory. Initially 12
observers were trained to make a speeded sequence of button presses for three keys located in
front of them. After subjects had become procient at the task (40 minutes training), we paired
them up and they dueled against each other. The two subjects in a duel had different roles:
one was the initiator and the other the reactor. A computer randomly determined which subject
was the initiator on every trial. Initiators were free to start their movement sequence when they
wanted. Subjects played against each other to be rst to complete the movement sequence. The
rst person to complete the sequence scored points off the other player. Reactors rarely beat
initiators (i.e. reactors normally got shot); however, the within-subject analysis of movement
times made when the subject was the reactor versus the initiator suggested an average of a
20ms advantage for reactive movements. These preliminary results suggest that even though
the guy who draws second gets shot, reactive movements may be faster than intentional ones.