Tall people are less likely to slap a mosquito before it draws blood. This is because we tend to have slower reflexes. Beyond swatting insects, reflexes are particularly important for such activities as sports and driving. Below is a calculator to determine how different your own reflexes are compared to an average height person. Following the calculator, I’ll explain how it works.
When we feel a mosquito on our skin, electrical signals travel along the nerves to the brain and then back to the muscles that react. The time for the these neural processes is dependent both on the speed of electrical signals and distance they travel. Clearly there is a longer distance to travel in us tall people. What’s surprising though is that speed may also be less, which may be due to tapering of nerves1. One study found that a 14% increase in stature resulted in a 22% increase in reaction time2.
The above calculator uses this ratio to calculate your reaction time difference from an average height person of your gender. The average heights used were for US men and women, 5′3.8″ and 5′9.3″. Given men are on average taller than women, it is no surprise that women have been found to have faster reflexes3.
I’d like to point out though that these are just trends, and everybody is different. Furthermore, the differences in reaction times are small and likely imperceptible. As a 6′7″ male, I would in theory have a 22% slower than average reaction time. Have I ever noticed this? Certainly not. One thing I have noticed is lesser coordination, which is thought to diminish with reflexes4. For instance, I have developed a phobia of the dance floor and once hit a light fixture in the dexterous game of darts. But perhaps a simply accentuated vertical extent had much to do with this. This being said, with some skill, tall people can own their height on the dance floor.
Larger species, like elephants, also have slower reaction times. Scientists studying this figure that large species compensate for this with superior planning and risk avoidance strategies5. This adaptation has been permitted by millions of years of evolutionary adaptation for their great size.
We tall people, on the other hand, have benefited from a lesser extent of evolutionary adaptation and may not compensate similarly. Perhaps this contributes to our increased risk of musculoskeletal injuries. Nevertheless, we can learn to plan ahead better. For myself, my plan is to stick to the slow dances.
For more height related calculators, check out the calculator“>height calculator page.
1. Soudmand R, Ward LC, Swift TR. Effect of height on nerve conduction velocity. Neurology. 1982;32.
2. Chu NS. Motor evoked potentials with magnetic stimulation: correlations with height. Electroencephalogr Clin Neurophysiol. 1989;74(6).
3. Neuromuscular Response Characteristics in Men and Women After Knee Perturbation in a Single-Leg, Weight-Bearing Stance
4. Soodan J., Kumar A. Relationship among Anthropometric Indices & Motor Nerve Conduction Velocity of Radial & Ulnar Nerves in Aerobic Trained Athletes. J Exerc Sci Physiother. 2012;8(1).
5. Scaling of sensorimotor control in terrestrial mammals
I doubt that. I usually stand there catching carpenter bees, ( the ones that look like bumblebee’s but with a white face) out of the air and I’m 6’5″ so there’s another myth debunked. 😀
if your daily job is something that needs coordination and reflexes your body starts prioritising those skills
I don’t know Tom Wiley. I definitely have issues with reflexes, balance and depth perception. Makes sense to me.
Maybe I’m a short person trapped in a tall body. Hehe. 😉
Hmmm… I wonder… Is it because we have to take care around others we tend to avoid rapid movements and train ourselves out of them perhaps?
Perhaps.
I have slow reflexes, poor motor skills/coordination, and terrible balance. I could believe it. (According to the calculator I’m 30% slower than normal, as a 6’4″ female.)
Rubbish!
This is very interesting. That said, I’ve been a professional dancer for many years ……
Interesting… I would like to know if they compared average height to shorter folks and see if there is still the same comparison.
they should im 5 foot
Yeah, that must be why baseball, basketball and volleyball players are such slothy slowpokes!!! Ridiculous.
I can attest to that, rode the pine for so long… But when we master that height… 🙂
It would be more accurate to simply say that we don’t have as many fast-twitch muscles as shorter people do instead of using the somewhat poorly chosen phrase, ‘slower reflexes’? There is a new, young and short (5’2) yoga teacher with background in dance at my studio whom I would love to take classes from…but she whips through asanas so quickly that I had a hard time keeping up with her. Granted, she may have since learned how to slow down a bit to accommodate those who don’t move as quickly as she can.
Definitely talking about reflexes here; please see the cited articles. I doubt quantity of fast twitch muscles negatively correlates with height.
6 foot american male. Makes sense however I think that Noel Mackenzie has a point because I have always been taller than those around me (im still growing) but in my younger years i often had reaction time as fast or faster than many shorter kids/teens, until about 11 where i had to stop being a whacky kid and take care about smacking that doorway and this person and that cup.
I once heard from a 5’3″ step class instructor over the loud speaker “Hey, Big guy in the back, can you stop doing the arm motions you’re throwing off the whole class.”
Not my favourite moment, but kind of funny in retrospect.
She was right, I was frantically trying to keep up with her motions, but never quite able to get in sync. For one simple arc of her arm shoulder to wrist movement(bicep curl), I traverse 1.21x the distance she dies, that along with the 26% lag in response time, made it pretty much impossible to keep up with her, and in a room full of mirrors it’s kind of hard to hide at 6’9″ tall. I had to execute every movement 1.25x faster than her just to keep up. I was a highly trained athlete at the time, very coordinated, and very fast, but in that situation it made no difference.
We do notice this stuff more as we get older. We cut ourselves deeper, burn ourselves worse, and sometimes don’t react in time, due to this lag in response time. I read somewhere that because of this tall people live in the past. This is because we experience everything later than sommeone significantly smaller. It has already happened but we experence a time lag because of the travel distance of impulses in our bodies.
Cool! I always wanted go back in time. Apparently I already am.
Just be glad it was your step instructor and not your prom date 😉
Tall people living in the past, interesting idea…
You ever wonder why they prefer taller goalkeepers in soccer?
Reach I would think, but I bet they are still a lot shorter than even the average NBA player.
Same
Iker Casillas probably the best goalkeeper of our time is short compared to other keepers. Also football is changing. More and more small people get into the professional game BECAUSE they move faster and have better reflexes
Actually is it scientifically proven that men typically bear more rapid reaction times to both visual and auditory information than their female counterparts https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221888321_Sex_Differences_in_Reaction_Time_Mean_and_Intraindividual_Variability_Across_the_Life_Span
. However,given the additional mass and less that men usually bear women may actually be able to move certain muscles faster,due to greater ability,in most cases.
*agility
Thanks for the piece – makes a lot of sense now. Am 6ft 75″
Why can some tall people play basketball really well