Research reveals that people with low heart rates are more likely to become criminals

Heart rate is an important indicator of human health and mental state, but few people would think that there is a link between heart rate and crime. A new study that tracked the criminal histories of more than 12,000 women for up to 40 years found that women with lower resting heart rates were slightly more likely to be convicted of nonviolent crimes.

Lower autonomic arousal as a risk factor for criminal offending and unintentional injuries among female conscripts | PLOS ONE

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0297639

Your Heart Rate Could Predict Whether You're More Likely to Be a Criminal: ScienceAlert
https://www.sciencealert.com/your-heart-rate-could-predict-whether-you're-more-likely-to-be-a-criminal

When we think about why people commit crimes, we often look at social factors such as personality, family environment, economic situation, employment, and education, but rarely consider biological factors such as the functioning of the nervous system.

However, it has been reported that there is a correlation between resting heart rate and antisocial behavior in humans, and a 2015 study confirmed that men with low resting heart rates are more likely to engage in antisocial behavior than men with low resting heart rates. This study was conducted only on men, and there are few studies that have examined the relationship between resting heart rate and antisocial behavior in women.

So this time, an international research team from the United States, Sweden, and Finland conducted a study tracking 12,499 Swedish women who were born in Sweden between 1958 and 1994 and joined the military. All of these women voluntarily joined the military, and their heart rate, blood pressure, etc. were measured during physical examinations. The research team tracked criminal convictions and unintentional injuries for up to 40 years.

The analysis found that women with a resting heart rate below 69 beats per minute were 35% more likely to be convicted of a criminal offense than women with a resting heart rate above 83 beats per minute. The association between low resting heart rate and conviction was significant for non-violent crimes, but no association was found between heart rate and conviction for violent crimes. The study also found that women with low systolic blood pressure (below 113 mmHg) had a 26% higher risk of being convicted of a criminal offense compared to women with high systolic blood pressure (above 134 mmHg).

In addition, a low resting heart rate was also associated with an increased risk of suffering, seeking medical treatment or dying from an 'unintentional injury' that excluded self-harm or motor vehicle accidents.

'It's important to note that this study was conducted on women who volunteered to serve in the military, so the results may be different in the general population. The researchers also compared the female military population with women who did not serve in the military, and found that while female soldiers were more likely to be involved in accidents, they also had lower overall crime rates.'

The researchers say their findings are noteworthy because they are consistent with previous evidence that lower resting heart rate is associated with a tendency to take part in extreme sports like skydiving or dangerous jobs like bomb disposal.

The hypothesis that low resting heart rate is associated with crime and risky behavior is that people with low activity of the autonomic nervous system, which regulates bodily functions such as heart rate, are more likely to take risks in search of excitement. In other words, people with low activity of the autonomic nervous system may be more likely to turn to dangerous hobbies or crime to get moderate excitement, and at the same time, such people tend to have a lower resting heart rate.

'While these results need to be replicated, they suggest that reduced autonomic arousal, specifically as indicated by reduced resting heart rate, may serve as a predictor of criminality, not only in men as previous studies have suggested, but also in women,' the team said.