Social Capital

In an era where it feels nearly impossible to get a job, you’re feeling defeated after being on the job market for six months, to no avail. As you vent to a close friend about what feels like the end of your career before it’s even begun, he says, “Man, why didn’t you tell me sooner? Just work at the pizzeria with me—we pay way above minimum!” Tossing dough isn’t your dream, but being in a kitchen with decent pay and an old friend doesn’t sound so bad. With your buddy’s referral, you’re being trained in no time, and you find that you really enjoy the work. It seems like your social capital has paid off, after all.

Social capital is the value we gain from our social networks, whether through support, shared norms, or access to information. It explains why connected communities often show greater resilience and cooperation as a result of positive human interaction. Social capital can be concrete or abstract, helpful information or opportunities for growth, or simply a favor for someone you know.¹ It is inherently collective in its nature as a product of beneficial connections between individuals in a social network.

Social capital in the work world describes the value of personal relationships and networks, both within a company and with external partners, that contribute to its success. This goes beyond company-to-company interactions, as the relationships that occur within companies may be just as crucial to fostering trust and reciprocity amongst colleagues for true social capital. Social capital can tie organizations together through the value found in positive connections between humans. 

Dimensions of Social Capital: Structures, Relationships, and Cognitions

Collective human behaviors result in social capital when we think about others and act in cooperative ways. There are three core dimensions to social capital that not only help us understand when these relationships arise, but also when they may succeed or fail. Let’s take a closer look:²

Before social capital was ever systematically studied and divided into types or categories, its strength was already being felt in the everyday ways people built trust and stay connected, through relationships that hold communities together. We can further understand how contemporary social capital manifests through the lens of its four types.

Not All Ties Are Created Equal: Functions of Social Capital

We all know that there are distinct flavors of connections, from kinship to casual. Bonding, bridging, linking, and identifying capital are the four different functions of relationships, from tight-knit circles to institutional connections.³  Each offers unique benefits, shaping how people access resources and opportunities, and takes on unique appearances in various industries spanning from education to civic engagement. Let’s take a closer look at the functions of social capital:²

Social Capital in the Digital Era

You’ve probably made the connection of social capital to at least one online network already, perhaps most intuitively to LinkedIn for its social capital-related vocabulary like “connections” and “networks.” This is no coincidence: the arrival of the Internet age, and especially the rise of social media networks, has been a game changer as far as what social capital means today. It's hard for us to imagine what social capital would look like in the absence of these digital networks, which afford us the convenience and ease of building social capital within and beyond our interconnected online reality.¹ Some examples might include:

Behavioral scientists care about social capital because it helps explain how and why people cooperate and make decisions within groups. It reveals the otherwise invisible threads like reciprocity and shared norms that hold communities and organizations together. Understanding social capital allows researchers to study how relationships influence behavior, like when contagious ideas or misinformation spread, or when social cohesion can promote resilience in times of stress. For behavioral scientists, social capital is not just a sociological concept—it’s a force that shapes how we act within our social environments which we can try our best to measure.

The future of social capital will likely be shaped by how we navigate increasingly digital and hybrid forms of connection. As technologies like AI, VR, and AR mediate more of our social interactions, new forms of trust and reciprocity will emerge. This will inevitably include connections between humans and machines, relationships which invoke both faith and skepticism. Tools like ChatGPT may soon become part of our social networks, forming new kinds of undiscovered relationships while closing gaps across communities that would otherwise be out of each other’s reach.