Evidence for intergenerational transmission of biological risk for antisocial behavior: Low resting heart rate in fathers predicts elevated criminality in sons

Purpose

Parental history of criminal offending is a major risk factor for later criminal behavior in children. Extensive research has also shown low resting heart rate (RHR), a moderately heritable biological variable, to be prospectively predictive of criminal behavior. Despite its status as a replicable risk factor, limited research exists on RHR's role in the intergenerational transmission of crime. Specifically, it remains unclear whether parent-child resemblance for biological characteristics such as RHR might play a role in intergenerational crime transmission.

Method

The current study was undertaken to clarify the role of RHR in the intergenerational transmission of crime, and test for moderating effects of socioeconomic status (SES) on its role, in a large Swedish population-based sample of fathers and their sons combined (N ∼ 266,000).

Results

Beyond replicating prior work documenting paternal crime history and RHR as predictors of later offspring crime, we show that father–son resemblance for RHR accounts in part for father-to-son crime transmission, and that familial SES does not moderate this transmission.

Conclusions

Our findings have important implications for understanding the role of biological and environmental influences in the intergenerational transmission of crime.