Probing human response times

Anders Johansen

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2004, vol. 338, issue 1, 286-291

Abstract: In a recent preprint (Dialog in e-mail traffic, preprint cond-mat/0304433), the temporal dynamics of an e-mail network has been investigated by Eckmann, Moses and Sergi. Specifically, the time period between an e-mail message and its reply were recorded. It will be shown here that their data agrees quantitatively with the frame work proposed to explain a recent experiment on the response of “internauts” to a news publication (Physica A 296(3–4) (2001) 539) despite differences in communication channels, topics, time-scale and socio-economic characteristics of the two population. This suggest a generalized response time distribution ∼t−1 for human populations in the absence of deadlines with important implications for psychological and social studies as well the study of dynamical networks.

Keywords: E-mail; Time distribution; Social networks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:338:y:2004:i:1:p:286-291

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2004.02.054

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