Emil O. W. Kirkegaard blog
I saw this paper at random: The consequences of heavy alcohol use remain a serious public health problem. Consistent evidence has demonstrated that both genetic and social influences contribute to alcohol use. Research on gene-environment interaction (GxE) has also demonstrated that these social and genetic influences do not act independently. Instead, certain environmental contexts may…
Continue ReadingThere is a lot of research on the link between crime and cognitive ability. (For criminal outcomes, see the problems in my previous post.) E.g. Is the Association between General Cognitive Ability and Violent Crime Caused by Family-Level Confounders? We linked longitudinal Swedish total population registers to study the association of general cognitive ability (intelligence)…
Continue ReadingI am watching Brian Boutwell’s (Twitter, RG) talk at a recent conference and this got me thinking. What are we measuring? As far as I know, there are typically two outcome variables used in criminological studies: Official records convictions. Self-reported criminal or anti-social behavior. But exactly what trait are we trying to measure? It seems…
Continue ReadingMany people listen to some kind of music while working, or perhaps to some kind of colored noise. Many people will swear that this works. There are multiple ways it can work: Increases work performance. Increase work enjoyment (positive mood effect). Makes work seem to go faster (time experience effect). They are not necessarily causally…
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