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The effect of intelligence may be even harder to assess reliably - are smarter people simply committing less crimes or are they just harder to be found / convic
by bd 16y ago
The effect of intelligence may be even harder to assess reliably - are smarter people simply committing less crimes or are they just harder to be found / convicted?
- goodside 16y agoThey commit less crime, or at least less violent crime. The evidence is unambiguous. They have fewer behavioral problems in school, they measure lower on biological correlates of aggression (serum testosterone/DHT and cortical norepinephrine), and, perhaps most importantly, they are less likely to be victims (most murders are committed against people of similar socioeconomic status to the perpetrator).
- bd 16y agoAll this sounds reasonable. Though given how huge proportion of all crimes goes unsolved (even violent crimes are just about 45% "cleared" [1]), it also makes sense that ones who got caught will be on average less smart than ones who got away, thus skewing statistics in a major way. [1] http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/offenses/clearances/index.html http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/offenses/clearances/index.ht...
- Qz 16y agoThat's funny -- at one point I attended a boarding school for people with 'behavioral problems', and every person there was incredibly smart. I call shenanigans on this idea that smart people get into less trouble.
- bdr 16y agoWow, talk about a sampling bias.