What Is Social Capital? How Can It Help You?

What Is Social Capital?

"Networks, understanding and values that shape the way we relate to each other and participate in social activities." (www.combatpoverty.ie/povertyinireland/glossary.htm)

How Can Social Capital Help?

"Social Capital help by giving you connections, and you will get nowhere without them! If you are anti-social in your life, you will never get a job, you will never get married, and when you die nobody will come to your funeral. You will be lonely!" (Molly McGivern)

You Trust Me?! :S

As one of our labs, we decided to make a fake profile on facebook and send out over 100 friend requests. We were seeing how many people really trust their peers now-a-days. Usually, people would say that they would never accept anybody they don't know to be their "friend" on facebook, but when "Natasha Walker" made an account and set her school to "UNCSA" the majority of the requests were responded to. There were even a few friend requests sent to us!! :O

However, this could show that people are just trying to increase their social capital by accepting people on facebook, that are classed more as aquaintences, compared to close friends.

Out of the 137 requests that were sent, 90 of the requests were accepted!

($) Hey! That's My Dollar...

Sunday morning Rebecca walked to brunch and dropped $1.00 on the way. The group of people behind us shouted out to her and told Rebecca that she had dropped some money. On the way back she was in front of a group of collage kids and she thought it would be a good idea to test to see if an age gap would make a difference. Because, and a high-schooler Rebecca thought that the honestly level could be different. Rebecca was correct in her prediction because when she dropped the dollar, not one of the three collage kids told her that she had dropped money. If Rebecca had social capital throughout the college campus then she probably would have gotten her dollar back.

Facebook Love

http://www.facebook.com/#!/isaiah.bindel

Here is the link to my profile on facebook.com. If you take the time to scroll down my wall you will see that a couple of days ago I was in an open relationship with Shea McAdoo. We wanted to see how many people noticed that we were in an open relationship. This may show how much Social Capital each of us have. We went around and asked 30 people if they saw the post. Out of the 30 we asked 24 of them said they saw the post. This shows that facebook really brings us together. So many people see things that go public. Would some if any actually be categorized under my Social Capital?

Honesty?

Isaiah went around campus on Saturday afternoon with a piece of salad in his front tooth. He went along with his normal day routine. He visited the pickle, connector and had various conversations, and tried to make his irregular appearance obvious for everybody to see. Can one really trust their peers?

After going through the day with a piece of salad in my tooth, then calculating how many people spoke up about it, made me more consciences about people honesty. I don’t know if this shows weather the people I talked to are true friends or if they didn’t want to embarrass me. This does not show how much Social Capital I have. Would the people who didn’t tell me, help me when I need help? If I were to test this theory the results would not be very accurate. I am glad that some people didn tell me. I know I can trust some people.