It can be generally assumed, according to White’s competence theory, that everyone desires to be competent at something and therefore those who can not be competent at legitimate acts such as taking jobs attempt to be competent at illegitimate acts such as delinquency. The present study examined the juvenile delinquents’ competence for jobs and delinquent acts by the use of a questionnaire which was made up on the basis of Bandura’s concepts of self-efficacy and outcome expectancy.
The subjects were 124 male inmates in a juvenile classification home, aged 16 through 19. The findings are: (1) those delinquents who have lower self-efficacy ratings for jobs show a tendency to have higher self-efficacy ratings for delinquency, and vice versa; (2) those who have higher self-efficacy and/or higher outcome expectancy for delinquency show a tendency to have higher outcome expectancy for jobs.
