Bur­glars are so good at rob­bing hous­es, they should be re­garded as ex­perts in their field on a pa­r with pi­lots, new re­search con­cludes.
Psy­chol­o­gists Claire Nee and Amy Meenaghan of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ports­mouth, U.K. found that bur­glars’ speed and ef­fi­cien­cy puts them on a lev­el with oth­ers who per­form com­pli­cat­ed tasks au­to­mat­i­cal­ly, such as mu­si­cians, chess play­ers and pi­lots.
The con­clu­sions were based on in-depth in­ter­views with 50 se­ri­al bur­g­lars on how they car­ry out break-ins, Nee and Mee­na­g­han said.