Abstract
There is no consensus on what social capital is because there is no widely accepted theory of values. Capital is a resource that helps individuals achieve some goal, so one needs to know what humans seek to achieve before one can define what capital is (social or otherwise). Evolutionary psychology is a strong contender for a general theory of values. From this perspective, social capital is any resource that inheres in relationships between individuals that help them attain reproductive success. An evolutionary psychological perspective on social capital can solve some empirical puzzles: Why women have more kin in their personal networks than men do; why black women are more likely to have children out of wedlock; why social capital often has opposite effects on status attainment of men and women; and why social capital appears to be declining in the US. An evolutionary psychological perspective can tell us what exactly social capital is, why humans are social and social capital is important to them, when and where humans maintain social relationships, and how to measure social capital precisely.
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