Hick's Law
Hick–Hyman Law
Describes the time it takes for a person to make a decision as a result of the possible choices he or she has: increasing the number of choices will increase the decision time logarithmically.
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Origin
British psychologist William Edmund Hick published his foundational paper "On the Rate of Gain of Information" in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology in 1952, demonstrating a logarithmic relationship between the number of stimulus choices and reaction time. American psychologist Ray Hyman independently confirmed and extended these findings the following year. Their combined work became one of the few quantitative laws in experimental psychology, later finding broad application in UX design.
Updated February 22, 2026