Intellectual Giftedness for Leadership: How Robust is the Crime Reducing Effect of Intellectual Class?

Abstract

This paper aims to reassess Burhan et al."s (2014, Intelligence, 47, 12-22) findings on the impact of intelligence (IQ) on the crime rates at a crosscountry level. People who belong to the intellectual group, characterized by IQ at the 95 th percentile of a normal distribution were found to have a tremendous impact in terms of crime rate reduction, compared to those with average ability (50 th percentile IQ). This was proven using the ordinary least squares (OLS). Other than that, people of non-intellectual class (5 th percentile IQ) were found to be least important in reducing crime. However, in their study, many independent variables were stated as not significantly related to the crime rates, which contradicts with other literature. It is questionable if the presence of serious outliers in the samples causes the objectionable finding. In this study, we analyzed the impact of IQ classes on the rate of eight different types of crimes, namely homicide, rape, kidnapping, robbery, assault, burglary, property crimes, and vehicle theft. Analysis was carried out using the Tukey"s Bisquare robust M-estimator that mitigates the effects of outliers in the samples. In conclusion, we have proved that those from the intellectual