Social Capital Quiz

Our social connections are integral to our health and happiness, but connections come in many different forms. A lifelong friendship usually feels different than a casual acquaintance you make at a networking event or a friend you acquire on Facebook.

Yet according to research, we need both weak ties and strong ties in order to build “social capital,” which researchers define as the web of relationships in our life and the tangible and intangible benefits we derive from them.

So how much social capital do you have? Does your capital come from strong bonds to those closest and most obviously similar to you, or from connections to people spanning different backgrounds and circumstances? And in our increasingly wired world, how do your online relationships compare to your offline ones?

The following quiz will help you answer those questions. Based on a scale developed by Dmitri Williams, a professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, it measures the amount—and the sources—of social capital in your life, zeroing in on online vs. offline capital.

This quiz contains a total of 26 questions. The first 20 will measure how much social capital you have, while the last six will help our researchers understand how social capital differs between people. Once you have answered all your questions, you will receive your social capital score along with some more detailed feedback.

Any responses submitted here will never be shared with any organization outside the Greater Good Science Center under any circumstances, ever. All responses are anonymized and only used in aggregate for evaluation purposes.