The Self Component in Potential Delinquency and Potential Non-Delinquency

Author(s): Walter C. Reckless, Simon Dinitz and Barbara Kay

Source: American Sociological Review , Oct., 1957, Vol. 22, No. 5 (Oct., 1957), pp. 566-570
Published by: American Sociological Association

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566 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

there are a number of different cults "on the reported in this paper would not enable us
market" at the same time. It is plausible to predict which of several competing cults
that important differences exist between the might be selected by a cult-prone (institu-
sort of person who was attracted to Krishna tionally alienated but religiously intense)
Venta and those who find themselves aroused person. Much further research would be re-
by a different sort of appeal.8 The evidence quired before such specific prediction could
be attempted.
8 The possibility that some persons may have
a generalized cult-proneness seems implied by the in When Prophecy Fails, Minneapolis: University
previous involvement with Dianetics of several of Minnesota Press, 1956. There are seekers, ap-
of the members of the cult studied by Leon Fest- parently, who move from cult to cult in a never-
inger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, ending quest.

THE SELF COMPONENT IN POTENTIAL DELINQUENCY

AND POTENTIAL NON-DELINQUENCY *

WALTER C. RECKLESS, SIMON DINITZ AND BARBARA KAY

The Ohio State University

THIS paper represents the second phase and maintenance of a socially acceptable or
of an integrated research project appropriate
on self-concept.2 It was further sug-
insulation against and vulnerability for gested that this "insulation" is both re-
delinquency at age 12, the threshold age flected in and a reflection of the definitions
for American city boys. The first phase of of significant others in the lives of the non-
the project 1 attempted to indicate what delinquents.
makes for insulation against delinquency of If appropriately good concepts of self
sixth-grade boys in high delinquency areas. and others, as manifested by young persons,
In the present report sixth-grade white boys might insulate against delinquency, adverse
in the highest delinquency areas in Colum- concepts of self and others might set the
bus, Ohio, who were nominated by their trend toward delinquency, in the sense that
teachers as headed for contact with the the young person has no internalized resist-
police and courts, are compared with boys ance to the confrontation of a bad neighbor-
in the same classrooms who were previously hood, bad home life, and bad companions.
nominated by the same teachers as most This paper attempts to shed some light on
likely to stay clear of contact with the police the problem by comparing the so-called in-
and juvenile court. sulated boys with the potentially delinquent
The purpose of the first phase of this boys in the same adverse situations.
investigation was to explore the components In the present study all sixth-grade
underlying potential insulation against legal teachers in schools located in the areas of
and social misconduct, which insulation oc- highest white delinquency were asked to
curs even in the most adverse social settings. nominate those boys in their classrooms who
As a result of this research it was suggested would, in their estimation, almost certainly
that "insulation" against delinquency ap- experience future police and juvenile court
pears to be a function of the acquisition contact.3 The teachers were also asked to
justify their nominations by indicating the
* Revised version of a paper read at the annual reasons for selecting each boy. The names
meeting of the American Sociological Society,
of the nominated boys and their families
August, 1957. This study was made possible by
a grant from the Ohio State University Develop- were subsequently screened through the
ment Fund.
1 Walter C. Reckless, Simon Dinitz, and Ellen 2 Ibid., p. 746.
Murray, "Self Concept as an Insulator Against 3 John S. Ely, An Ecological Study of Juvenile
Delinquency," American Sociological Review, 21 Delinquency in Franklin County, Master's Thesis,
(December, 1956), pp. 744-746. The Ohio State University, 1952.

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 POTENTIAL DELINQUENCY AND NON-DELINQUENCY 567

police and juvenile court files for previous Court Clearances. Initial nominations and
contact. All nominees and their mothers were evaluations of white boys thought to be
then interviewed with a structured schedule. "insulated" against delinquency were ob-
As in the investigation of "insulated" boys, tained from all sixth-grade teachers in
the basic instruments consisted of the delin- schools located in the sixteen census tracts
quency vulnerability (DE) and social re- that have the highest delinquency rates.
sponsibility (RE) scales of the Gough Cali- The 30 teachers selected 192 students, or
fornia Inventory.4 These had been modified 52 per cent of the eligible boys, in their
slightly to make them more meaningful for classes. Every teacher nominated at least
a grade-school population group. In addition, two students, and the average was 6.4 boys
the four most highly discriminating items in per class. The range of teacher selection
an occupational preference scale 5 were used varied from 15 to 100 per cent of the eligible
and included in a third instrument, which students. In the second study almost all the
attempted to determine the respondent's same teachers in the same schools nominated
self-concept with regard to law abiding be- 108 boys as being potentially delinquent.
havior, his evaluations of family affectional These boys constituted one-fourth of the
patterns, and his friendship patterns and eligible students. While nine teachers failed
leisure activities. to list any of their students as potential
Except for the occupational preference candidates for future court contact, as many
items, every question asked of the boy in as three-fifths of the eligible boys in several
this latter instrument was also asked of his of the classrooms were nominated.
mother. This procedure was used in both In an attempt to determine the validity
studies and permitted an analysis of the of teacher nominations and previous involve-
similarities and differences in the definitions ment of the students with the law, both
of the respondents and their mothers. The "good" (i.e., potentially insulated) and po-
boys completed self-administered forms at tentially delinquent nominees and their fami-
the same time their mothers were being lies were cleared through police and juvenile
interviewed separately. court files. It was found that many of these
twelve year old boys, who in terms of juve-
FINDINGS nile court statistics are at the threshold of
delinquency, already had experienced court
The results derived from these investi- contact. The records revealed that sixteen
gations are presented in terms of teacher of the 192 "good" boys (8.3 per cent) were
nominations, evaluations and court clear- on file for misconduct. A significantly greater
ances, background characteristics, delin- percentage of the 108 students nominated as
quency proneness scores, and differential prospective delinquents, namely 23 per cent,
self-concepts of "insulated" or "good" boys had had some type of law enforcement con-
and potentially delinquent subjects. tact. Many of those on record in both groups
Teacher Nominations, Evaluations, and had been cited several times and a few had
committed as many as five previous offenses.
4 Harrison G. Gough, "A Sociological Theory
of Psychology," American Journal of Sociology,
The nature of the charges against these boys
(March, 1948), pp. 359-366; Harrison G. Gough, ranged from malicious destruction of prop-
"Systematic Validation of a Test for Delinquency," erty (generally in the case of the "good"
paper read at the annual meeting of the American boys) through incorrigibility and some form
Psychological Association, September, 1954; and
Harrison G. Gough and Donald Peterson, "The
of theft for the prospective delinquents. On
Identification and Measurement of Predispositional the whole, of all boys who had been before
Factors in Crime and Delinquency," Journal of the court, students nominated as "good"
Consulting Psychology, 16 (June, 1952), pp. 207-
boys (potentially insulated) appeared to
212.
5 The four items were taken from occupational
have been involved in fewer and less serious
projections of 12 year old white boys in Evansville, offenses than had the potentially delinquent
Indiana, and were found to be related to delin- nominees.
quency vulnerability, See James E. Morlock, Pre-
Background Characteristics. Of the 192
dicting Delinquency in a Homogeneous Group of
Pre-Adolescent Boys, Doctoral Dissertation, The "good" boys originally nominated, the 16
Ohio State University, 1947. with a previous offense record were elimi-

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568 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

nated and 51 others could not be located of 4.91).7 Even when the 24 previous con-
because of removals during the summer tact cases were eliminated from the poten-
recess. Thus, 125 subjects of the "good" tially delinquent sample, the residual 77
boy nominees remained. As against this, and boys of the 101 were still significantly dif-
because of the shorter time span between ferent in the expected directions from the
nominations, clearances, and contact, 101 125 "good" boys on the two scales.
of the 108 boys nominated as potential de- Unfortunately, in the first study we were
linquents were interviewed. so concerned with isolating a truly non-
In most respects the social background delinquent group that we did not gather data
characteristics of the two sets of respondents on the 16 boys nominated as "insulated"
were not significantly different. This was but who had police or court records. How-
largely a function of the design, which mini- ever, it is reasonable to assume that these
mized or eliminated age, sex, race and socio- 16 boys would not test any higher than the
economic status variations. In addition, there 24 boys nominated as potential delinquents
were no significant variations in the occupa- who were also found to have police and court
tions of the boys' fathers, the percentage of records, and it might be reasonably expected
mothers with full or part-time employment, that they would test lower on our measures
the percentage of homeowners, and the of delinquency vulnerability.
length of residence in the community. The delinquency vulnerability and social
It was found, however, that on at least responsibility scales did more than differ-
one important variable the "insulated" and entiate between the potentially delinquent
prospective delinquent subjects did differ and non-delinquent nominees. The scales
significantly. Fewer of the "insulated" boys also discriminated significantly, within the
than -of the prospective delinquents were sample of potential delinquents, between
members of broken homes (22 versus 36 those who had and those who had not
per cent). As perhaps one consequence of experienced previous police and court con-
this difference, the "good" boys families tact. (The differences within the potentially
were larger than those of the potential de- delinquent group will be reserved for discus-
linquents. The average family size in the
sion in a subsequent paper.) Both scales
"insulated" sample was 3.6 against 2.6 in
were thus found to be sufficiently precise to
the prospective delinquent sample.
merit consideration as delinquency screening
Delinquency Proneness Measures and
devices.
Scores. In addition to attempting to vali-
Self-Concepts and Evaluations of Inter-
date the nominations and judgments of the
personal Relationships. It was possible in
teachers through the court clearance pro-
the two studies to compare the responses of
cedure, nominees were also tested on the
the 125 "insulated" boys with those of the
delinquency vulnerability and social re-
101 potentially delinquent boys to 18 ques-
sponsibility scales of the Gough California
tions involving self-concepts and interper-
Psychological Inventory. The mean delin-
sonal relationships, using the Chi-square test
quency vulnerability score of the 125 "insu-
of significance. We also compared the re-
lated" boys was found to be lower than that
sponses of the two sets of mothers on a
of all but one sample group previously tested
in the United States,6 and significantly lower
(using the critical ratio test at the .01 level) 7 In both sample groups the delinquency vulner-
than the mean score of the 101 prospective ability and social responsibility scores were nega-
tively correlated. While the correlation coefficients
delinquent boys (14.57 with an S. D. of
were statistically significant in both instances, a
6.42 versus 22.60 with an S. D. of 7.99). much higher correlation was found in the "insu-
Similarly, the mean social responsibility lated" sample (-.605) than in the potentially de-
score of the (125) "good" boys was sig- linquent sample (-.259). The delinquency vulner-
nificantly higher than that of the (101) ability scale was also found to have high reliability
as measured by the split-half technique. As a very
nominated potential delinquents (28.86 with
conservative estimate of reliability, the scores on
an S. D. of 3.60 versus 24.26 with an S. D. the first 23 items of the DE scale were correlated
with scores on the last 23 items. For the 101
6 See Reckless, Dinitz and Murray, op. cit., p. potentially delinquent boys the split-half correla-
744. tion was +.594.

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 POTENTIAL DELINQUENCY AND NON-DELINQUENCY 569

comparable number of schedule items, again often bring their friends home. The mothers
using the Chi-square test. of the potentially delinquent boys also more
The evidence thus obtained tends to give often than the mothers of the insulated boys
further support to the initial thesis that self- stated that the family situation was char-
concept may be an underlying component acterized by conflict and that there was not
in delinquent or non-delinquent conduct. very much family participation in leisure
Perhaps one of the chief distinctions between and other activities. Finally, the mothers of
persons who will and those who will not the "insulated" and the potentially delin-
experience difficulty with the law in their quent boys differed in their evaluations of
formative and later years lies in the extent the frequency and severity of parental pun-
to which a socially acceptable self image ishment and in their definitions of the activ-
has been developed. ity level of their respective sons. The "good"
An analysis and comparison of the "insu- boys were less frequently punished and
lated" and potentially delinquent nominees were much more often defined by their
revealed significant differences in the self mothers as being quiet.
images of members in the two groups. The These differential perceptions on the part
"insulated" boys, unlike the potentially de- of both the boys and their mothers strongly
linquent, did not ever expect to have to be suggest that one of the preconditions of law-
taken to juvenile court or jail. They indi- abiding or delinquent conduct is to be found
cated a desire to avoid trouble at all costs in the concept of self and others that one has
and they had rarely engaged in any form acquired in his primary group relationships.
of theft, and they had few if any friends It should be emphasized in support of this
who had been in trouble with the law. They contention that the mothers of the poten-
liked school and rarely played "hookey." tially delinquent boys were no less often
They conceived of themselves as obedient in agreement with their sons' less favorable
sons who did not frequently behave in a social definitions and perceptions than were
manner contrary to their parents' wishes. the mothers of the insulated boys with their
They evaluated their families as being as sons' more acceptable definitions. Conse-
good or better than most families and the quently, the boys themselves, their mothers,
relationships in the home as harmonious and the teachers in each sample group of
and cordial. They felt that their parents nominees were aware of some basic com-
were neither overly strict nor lax and cer- ponent(s) which steers boys away from or
tainly not unnecessarily punitive. In all of toward delinquency. In the realities of social
these respects they differed from the boys interaction, "insulated" boys seem to define
nominated as being potentially delinquent. themselves and seem to be thought of as
Further, even within the potentially delin- "good" boys by their parents and teachers
quent group itself important differences in to no less an extent than the potentially
self-concepts and family evaluations were delinquent boys seem to define themselves
found between the boys who had previous and to be defined in an opposite manner.
legal involvement and those who had not
had such contact. INTERPRETATION

Those differences between the "insu-

It is proposed that a socially appropriate
lated" and potentially delinquent boys were,
or inappropriate concept of self and other
if anything, magnified by their respective
is the basic component that steers the youth-
parents. For example, all but one of the
ful person away from or toward delinquency
mothers of the potentially delinquent boys
and that those appropriate or inappropriate
thought that their sons could have selected
concepts represent the differential responses
better friends. These mothers also indicated
to various environments and confrontations
significantly more frequently than their
of delinquency patterns.8 With self and
their counterparts in the insulated group
other concepts operating in appropriate and
that they were often unaware of their sons'
whereabouts, that they did not know very
8 Walter C. Reckless, The Crime Problem, sec-
many of the friends with whom their boys
ond edition, New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts,
associated, and that their sons did not very 1955, pp. 79-81 and p. 221 ff.

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570 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

inappropriate directions, the normal good together comprise a modal socio-psychologi-

boy in the high delinquency area, the nor- cal development and each may equally in-
mal bad boy in the high delinquency area, volve a normal development.
the normal good boy in the good environ- In conclusion, the authors wish to point
ment, and the normal bad boy in the good out that their extension of self theory to
environment can be understood. Concept explain insulation against and proneness
of self and other is the differential response toward delinquency is intended to apply
component that helps to explain why some only to the development of "normal or
succumb and others do not, why some gravi- modal" goodness and badness and not a
tate toward socially unacceptable patterns goodnesss generated by neurotic and pre-
of behavior and others veer away from them. psychotic components or a badness gener-
Concept of self and other contains the ated by pathological conditions or faulty
impact of life on the person as he has in- character development (psychopathic per-
ternalized his experience. In other words, it sonality). Nevertheless, because it applies
consists of the residues of attitudes and to the normal or modal acquisition of in-
meanings accumulated through the inter- sulation against or proneness toward delin-
action of a certain organism or constitution quency, self theory seems to the authors to
in interpersonal relations. Appropriate or be the best operational basis for designing
inappropriate concepts of self and other effective prevention and treatment measures.

SOCIAL STRATIFICATION AND SOCIAL RELATIONS:

AN EMPIRICAL TEST OF THE DISJUNCTIVENESS
OF SOCIAL CLASSES *

ROBERT A. ELLIS

Stanford University

THE failure of several recent investiga- social class hypothesis. The negative find-
tors to obtain evidence of disjunctive ings have been considered as evidence to
social classes I has led a number of support "the continuum theory of social
social scientists to doubt the validity of the stratification," in which the prestige status
system is conceived of as a hierarchically-
* Revision of paper read at the annual meet-
arranowpd order of social nositionn. 2
ing of the American Sociological Society, Septem-
ber, 1956. Included are findings from a paper on ciology, 16 (March, 1951), pp. 17-29; Stanley
"Class Awareness in a Jamaican Market Town," Hetzler, "An Investigation of the Distinctiveness of
presented at the Spring meeting of the Southwestern Social Classes," American Sociological Review, 18
Anthropological Society, May, 1956. The present (October, 1953), pp. 493-497; Godfrey Hochbaum,
report is based on the writer's unpublished disser- John G. Darley, E. D. Monachesi, and Charles
tation, "Social Stratification in a Jamaican Market Bird, "Socio-Economic Variables in a Large City,"
Town: A Conceptual and Methodological Analysis," American Journal of Sociology, 61 (July, 1955),
Yale University, 1956. Data for the research were pp. 31-38; William F. Kenkel, "An Experimental
collected during the summer of 1954 as part of the Analysis of Social Stratification in Columbus, Ohio,"
Yale Interdisciplinary Training Program. The au- Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1952;
thor is indebted to that program and to the Ford Thomas E. Lasswell, "A Study of Social Stratifica-
and Carnegie Foundations, which financed separate tion Using an Area Sample of Raters," American
phases of it. Appreciation is expressed to August B. Sociological Review, 19 (June, 1954), pp. 310-313;
Hollingshead and Maurice R. Davie for their many Gerhardt E. Lenski, "American Social Classes:
helpful suggestions and constructive criticisms. The Statistical Strata or Social Groups?" American
author is also indebted to the many persons in Journal of Sociology, 58 (September, 1952), pp.
Jamaica who so willingly co-operated with him 139-144; Arnold M. Rose, "The Popular Meaning
during the course of the research. of Class Designation," Sociology and Social Re-
1 Otis Dudley Duncan and Jay W. Artis, "Some search, 38 (September-October, 1953), pp. 14-21.
Problems of Stratification Research," Rural So- 2 Cuber and Kenkel's treatment is largely devoted

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