Motivations and social network as predictors of social engagement

DAVILA, M. C.; ZLOBINA, A.; ÁLVAREZ-HERNÁNDEZ, G. ; DELFINO, G.

San Antonio

Congreso; 41th Annual Scientific Meeting of the International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP); 2018

International Society of Political Psychology

Young people?s active participation in the society is a focus of increasing social and political interest. Our research contributes to the understanding of the predictors of social engagement by incorporating, together with more traditional measures, the social network analysis, being among a few studies that employ this methodology. In an on-line survey, 263 undergraduate students currently not involved in any kind of social participation estimated the probability of their future involvement in several types of social engagement (e.g., volunteerism, political parties, community associations). They also reported their possible motivations to initiate these forms of social participation, and the approximate number of their relatives, friends, and acquaintances (neighbors, coworkers, etc.) developing each type of social participation. This latter information was used to calculate the degree of the centrality of the subjects in their social networks, based on positional dominance of Brandes (2016).The results show that our social contacts fundamentally and not so much the motivations powerfully predict the intention to engage in diverse forms of civic and sociopolitical participation. Thus, our study provides novel evidence on the role of social networks, and contrasts its impact with that of individual motives in predicting participation. We discuss our results in light of Cialdini and collaborators? focus norm approach.