Probing human response times

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.