It Matters Whom You Know: Mapping the Links Between Social Capital, Trust and Willingness to Cooperate

Trust and willingness to cooperate depend on the structure of one’s social network and the resources one can access through it. In this study, based on a survey dataset of a representative sample of the Polish population (n = 1000) we create an empirical ‘map’ of four distinct dimensions of social capital: degree (number of social ties), centrality in the social network, bridging social capital (ties with dissimilar others), and bonding social capital (ties with similar others, primarily with kin). We investigate the links between social capital and its key correlates: generalized and particularized trust and willingness to cooperate. We find that centrality (or occupying the position of a network bridge) is positively related to trust, whereas for bonding social capital this relation is negative. We find also a puzzling effect of cooperation without trust in the case of individuals with high bridging social capital resources (ties with dissimilar others).