Abstract
The main goal of this paper is to investigate whether some dimensions of civic and religious social capital are connected to antisocial attitudes of the youth. Based on the social capital theory and previous research, the author assumed that membership of voluntary associations as a dimension of civic social capital and attendance at religious services as a dimension of religious social capital, will be negatively correlated with antisocial attitudes of the youth. The integrated dataset of the last European Values Study and the World Values Survey waves were used as the sources of the research data. The dataset was comprised of 11,411 respondents who were younger than 25 years old from 79 countries. As hypothesized, at the individual level, attendance at religious services was negatively correlated with antisocial attitudes, whereas membership of voluntary associations was positively correlated with antisocial attitudes. At the country level, none of the hypothesized correlations were confirmed. A cross-level interaction between GDP and associational membership was found. The author explains the findings by evoking the special characteristics of religious social capital and its strength in building moral obligations and by suggesting possible differences in incentives for joining voluntary associations in the countries with different levels of economic wealth.
Highlights
The main purpose of this paper is to investigate whether civic and religious social capital are negatively connected to antisocial attitudes
Even though possible negative effects of social capital for particular organizations and the society as a whole have been frequently noted [39,40,41,42], the study finding that membership of voluntary associations could have an overall detrimental effect on the antisocial attitudes of the youth was not expected and it refuted my first hypothesis
The explanation must take into account the finding that the effect of social capital might be different in different associations and in different countries, depending on the nature of such associations and on some country characteristics that are caused by economic wealth, or are at least correlated with it
Summary
Social capital consists of “some aspect of social structures and they facilitate certain actions of actors—whether persons or corporate actors—within the structure” [1] It can be defined as “features of social organizations, such as networks, norms and trust that facilitate action and cooperation for mutual benefit” [2] The concept is heuristically useful since it connects the notion of a purposive and rational social actor with the opportunities provided by social context and, has the potential for generalization and theoretical unification. The concept of social capital is inherently multidimensional. Tsai and Ghoshal’s [3]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
