Low Heart Rate May Lead To Criminal Behavior, Study
New research shows that youths with a low heart rate tend to show criminal behavior when they grow into adulthood.
Antti Latvala, the study author and postdoctoral researcher at the department of public health at the University of Helsinki in Finland, as well as her team, examined the criminal records of more than 700,000 Swedish men between 1973 and 2009, and compared them to their recorded heart rates when they turned 18.
The human heart rate, or the number of times the heart beats every minute is about 60 and 100 beats per minute for a normal or 'resting' heart.
At first the violent crimes of the people studied included "murder, assault, kidnapping, robbery and rape," even as the nonviolent crimes translated to "drug dealing, theft and some traffic violations".
Almost 40 percent of youth who showed a low heart rate tended to commit violent criminal activities. Youth who exhibited a lower heart rate show 25 percent more tendency to exhibit non-violent criminal activities too.
However, more research is needed to establish the link between the two. The study only found an association rather than a cause-and-effect link.
"It is obvious that low resting heart rate by itself cannot be used to determine future violent or antisocial behavior," Latvala told Reuters Health by email. "However, 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."
Adrian Raine, a researcher in criminology and psychology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia agreed with the study, yet warned parents not to "panic" if their children exhibited low heart rate.
"There are many things that contribute to violence, not just biological factors like heart rate," Raine said to HealthDay News. "Yes, having a low heart rate raises the odds of committing a crime, and not just violent crime, all kinds of criminal and reckless behavior. But it doesn't mean that you will."
The study was published in the Sept.9 issue of JAMA Psychiatry.
