Having a low heart rate while resting increases the risk of committing or being a victim of crime.
The anatomy of the criminal: this is a subject that has agitated science and medicine for more than a century. Since Cesare Lumbroso, whose plates described the facies of the criminal man, and the phrenology of Franz-Joseph Gall, false leads have multiplied. Even today, it remains difficult to distinguish between the innate and the acquired in this area.
A Scandinavian study is making its contribution in this very delicate field. She is not interested in the physiognomy of the criminal but more in his biology. According to the conclusions, published in the JAMA Psychiatry, the resting heart rate of adolescents could be a predictor of violent behavior in adulthood.
Risk increased by 39%
At the origin of this work, a hypothesis: the pulse at rest indicates the reaction to stress and fear. To confirm this association, a Finnish-Swedish team looked at the heart rate of 710,200 men born between 1958 and 1991. A large population that “places the empirical basis of longitudinal results above all suspicion”, of after the philosopher Adrian Raine, who comments on the conclusions in an editorial.
The measurements were taken when they completed their military service, at around 18 years old, and the follow-up lasted 36 years on average. During the same period, 40,000 men were convicted of violent crimes.
After taking into account psychological factors in particular, the researchers conclude that there is indeed an association between a weak pulse at rest and the probability of being involved in a violent crime. Men with the lowest heart rate (60 beats per minute or less) are 39% more likely to commit a violent crime, and 25% more likely to commit a non-violent crime. This association does not appear during sex crimes.
Less responsive men
In the eyes of the philosopher Adrian Raine, of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (United States), the heart rate is an “unequivocal” risk factor. But it’s not just about committing a crime, he recalls. It also affects the risk of being a victim.
How to explain this association between low pulse and criminality? The authors of the study put forward two hypotheses of equal weight. The first is that the low heart rate reflects a lack of response or excitement to fear. According to the second, it is a physiological reaction to a source of stress. In both cases, the researchers explain, the subject will tend to take more risks in the context of a search for sensations. This theory is reinforced by the association with three distinct events, abounds Adrian Raine: to have violent behavior, to be the victim of violence, and to suffer from accidental injuries.
A mitigating circumstance?
“Our results confirm that in addition to being associated with aggressive and antisocial behavior during childhood and adolescence, a low heart rate at rest increases the risk of violent and non-violent antisocial behavior in adulthood,” the authors conclude. They do recognize some limitations to their work, however: they cannot be extended to women, they only rely on crimes that resulted in a conviction, and half of the sample did not have heart rate data. .
The philosopher Adrian Raine considers these results to be solid. But they raise a larger question, that of society’s reaction to such data. “No one wants to blame someone for the violence they endure. We can hardly blame him for having a low pulse, which exposes them to this risk, ”he analyzes. Based on this principle, should the heart rate be considered as a mitigating circumstance? For the columnist, the answer is clear: justice must stop ignoring “the anatomy of violence”.
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