News Digest

‘A lack of fear’: Low heart rates may lead teen boys to life of violent crime

Boys with a low resting heart rate in their late teens run a higher risk of turning to a life of violent crime when grown, a study suggests. The findings could lead to improved ways to stop certain people from indulging in crime before it is too late. Experts say that low resting heart rate (RHR) is either an indicator of a chronically low level of psychological arousal, which may lead some people to seek stimulating experiences in risk-taking, or a marker of weakened responses to aversive and stressful stimuli, which can lead to reckless behavior. A low resting heart rate can also reflect a lack of fear.

If you lack fear, you’re more likely to commit crime because you’re not concerned about getting caught.

Adrian Raine, a researcher in criminology and psychology at the University of Pennsylvania

The findings, published online by JAMA Psychiatry, studied data on about 710,000 Swedish men born from 1958 to 1991, who were followed for up to 35.7 years. The study found that men with the lowest RHR had a 39 percent higher chance of being convicted of violent crimes and a 25 percent higher chance of getting convicted of nonviolent crimes.

[It] is intriguing that such a simple measure can be used as an indicator of individual differences in psychophysiological processes, which make up one small but integral piece of the puzzle.

Antti Latvala of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and the University of Helsinki