Since my last entry on TASK SATURATION (which is a generic problem) and the entry gets shared and spread around, the term “Hick’s Law” pops up in comments. I look at the authors, and they come from veteran martial arts with experience from the 1990s and 2000s, a realm of numerous martial arts sales-marketing-mythologies were in play through MA magazines. One was shoving Hicks Law down our throats, (oh, another was the heart rate chart from PPCT and well, don’t get me started on these…) So, I kind of get the willies when I hear the term “Hick’s Law.” Task Saturation can be a problem, memorizing too much, but I don’t mention Hick’s Law at all for two reasons,
1: because the lab test specifics don’t fit fighting (never was meant to be) and,
2: it has been replaced by smarter performance studies with solutions.
Hick’s Law was developed by William Edmund Hick (British psychologist) and Ray Hyman (American psychologist). They were studying human reaction time in the early 1950s. The original experiments involved:
• A subject sitting in front of a small panel of lights;
• Only one light would turn on;
• The subject had to react by pressing the matching button; (I am not sure that is a basis for dissecting multiple decision making. Think about it.)
Yet, what they determined from this “one touch the one light ” was enhanced into the more choices you give a person, the slower their reaction time.” This became Hick–Hyman Law: Reaction time increases logarithmically as the number of choices increases.
A seated light-hunt test is very different than playing tennis or hitting a baseball. And people can be quite adept with response times. I hesitate to promote-attach the term Hicks, even speak it) . Since about the mid-1990s, Hicks law was used to dumb people down in martial arts, and-or used as a marketing tool to sell like…one-stop-shop martial systems like The Spear. Subsequent folks then like to throw around terms like, “it takes a second to…”
I might babble on about this so I’ll let medical A.I. answer…
“Hick’s Law is a neat laboratory concept—lights, switches, buttons. But fights, sports, and ambushes aren’t neat. They’re fast, dirty, emotional, and full of meaning. People, especially with some experience, don’t sift through a menu of moves. They move with practiced patterns, anticipation, instinct and chunking, none of which Hick’s Law measures. In real combat, stress physiology and reflexes overwhelm the minor delays that Hick’s Law predicts. It’s a useful idea, but a poor explanation of actual human response under pressure. Problems With Using Hick’s Law in Sports & Martial Training. Hick’s Law says: More choices = more reaction time. But in fighting and sports, real human behavior doesn’t work that neatly. Here’s why:
1. Hick’s Law was built on simple button-press experiments. The original 1950s/1960s tests involved:
• People sitting still.
• Looking at a light or symbol.
• Pushing one correct button.
This is nowhere near the chaos of a fight. A fist, kick, knife, shove, tackle, or flying baseball is not a clean stimulus. So, any “equation” from that world has limited value in true dynamic-action environments.
2. Trained performers don’t respond with “choices”—they respond with patterns, relying on:
• automaticity.
• muscle memory.
• well-grooved options.
• pre-planned scripts.
• simple heuristics (“if A, then do B”).
This means their brains don’t run through a menu of decisions like a computer. They “chunk” actions into one rapid response. That bypasses Hick’s Law. And not just in fighting, but can in everyday life.
3. Hick’s Law assumes equal choices (a panel of flashing lights?) real attacks are not equal. In sparring or combat, the attacker’s motion isn’t equally weighted. The brain automatically prioritizes the most dangerous or most probable action. You are not choosing out of ten moves. You are reacting to the meaning of motion.
4. Movement reaction is faster than cognitive reaction. Fighting involves reflexive movement, not cognitive selection. Many responses in combat follow: Perception → reflex/action, NOT Perception → evaluation → choice → action. Hick’s Law only applies to the second one.
5. Real fights involve anticipation, not reaction. Good fighters read shoulders, hips, breath, set traps, pre-load responses…
• create rhythms and break rhythms, This anticipation cuts reaction time in half or more and destroys the relevance of Hick’s Law.
7. Training reduces “choices” into one conditioned option. When you pressure-test in sparring or scenarios, you naturally form preferences. So even if a system teaches many responses, under stress you revert to the one you grooved the most, not all of them. The menu disappears.
8. Hick’s Law doesn’t apply under surprise ambush. In sudden, close-range attacks. No thought. No choices. No 0.3-second math. Surprise attacks trigger reflex arcs, and chunking, not cognitive decisions. Hick’s Law can’t explain or predict that.
9. Too many trainers misuse Hick’s Law to push “1-move systems.” Some instructors claim: “Don’t learn many moves—Hick’s Law says you’ll freeze!” But people might know many moves; they just don’t think about them one at a time. Properly trained to reflexively deploy the right pattern under stress. Hick’s Law is not an excuse for oversimplification.”
Thanks A.I. There are SO MANY newer, better related response times studies. Read those! Quote those! Move on from Hicks. You can even forget Hicks! There is much more to study.
Mistaken, police, military and military writers also claim Hicks originated with the computor era. No, that came years later. Computor experts loved Hicks, using it in webpage menu selection and asking how fast can customers read and select a choice on a short or long menu, given their short attention spans.
So, yeah, Hick’s Law exists out there in the universe. But, it’s not the end-all for this or any topic. There are better studies with solutions. Some selection decisions can be made in milliseconds, in whuch case “time” is not such a boogey-man. You can train-set moves in chunks, and then there’s the whole 1990s and 2000s snake oil salesmen era-thing. All that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. All these specifics come to mind when I hear the term and why I don’t use the term.
