A fascinating new study suggests that fitness correlates with being a deviant — the less fit you are, the more likely you are to be a deviant.

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A new paper in the Journal of Applied Psychology claims that a lack of physical fitness may be associated with deviance

Fitness and Deviants

deviant fitness
Deviants and fitness: a 600lb drug dealer, courtesy of the Daily Mail

In criminology, sociology and other related disciplines, deviance refers to rule-breaking behaviour of one kind or another which fails to conform to the rules and expectations of a particular society or social group. Although deviance is closely related to the concept of crime, which is law breaking behaviour, not all deviant behaviour is criminal; criminal behaviour, however, is usually deviant.

The new research involved three separate studies. In Study 1, the researchers assembled a dataset on 50 metropolitan areas in the U.S. spanning a 9-year period. They found that the physical fitness index of a metropolitan area was negatively related to deviance in that area in a concurrent as well as time-lagged fashion. 

The researchers then complemented this aggregate-level test with two studies testing the theory at the individual level. In Study 2, they collected multi-source data from 3,925 military recruits who underwent physical training and found that those who scored higher on physical fitness test were less likely to engage in deviance. 

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GOOD. By which I mean, this man is more likely to be good.

The third study was more complex and used a five-wave longitudinal design in a sample of employees working in service roles. The study found that ego depletion mediates the effect of physical activity on workplace deviance.

The results of the new research will probably come as little surprise to anybody who has undertaken a course of physical exercise and transformed their body. The virtues and values that are essential to crafting a healthy, fit body – discipline, time-management, sacrifice, the voluntary adoption of suffering and courage in the face of it – are all, on the whole, virtues and values that are likely to make you a better rather than a worse person and a better citizen.

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Being ‘harmless’ and advertising yourself as such, is not the same thing as being good

The new research bolsters previous research, which we recently reported on, on the relationship between moral behaviour and testosterone levels. At least two studies suggest that increased testosterone may be responsible for increased honesty and a more complex approach to morality.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure/image?size=large&id=10.1371/journal.pone.0046774.g001

The evidence from one experiment on the relationship between testosterone and honesty, which showed that male subjects administered a testosterone gel were less likely to cheat in a game to improve their winnings

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