{"id":615,"date":"2011-01-14T21:13:38","date_gmt":"2011-01-14T21:13:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/science-of-generosity\/?p=615"},"modified":"2011-01-28T17:44:45","modified_gmt":"2011-01-28T17:44:45","slug":"615","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/science-of-generosity\/2011\/01\/14\/615\/","title":{"rendered":"From social problems to social goods"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_616\" style=\"width: 145px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/science-of-generosity\/researchers\/pamela-paxton\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-616\" class=\"size-full wp-image-616\" src=\"http:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/science-of-generosity\/files\/2011\/01\/Paxton-new.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"135\" height=\"202\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-616\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pamela Paxton<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Back when I was in graduate school, I was having trouble picking my dissertation topic. Coming from the typical sociology \u201csocial problems\u201d perspective, I could not decide which social problem was important enough to study exclusively. One day I started brainstorming ideas and writing them down on index cards (with the idea that I\u2019d sort or organize them somehow). I happened to write down \u201cwhy do people volunteer?\u201d Suddenly my whole perspective shifted.\u00a0 Rather than focusing on social <em>problems<\/em>, I thought, why not focus on social <em>goods<\/em>? <!--more-->I was already a political sociologist doing cross-national work, so I integrated my new interest in \u201cprosocial behavior\u201d with my existing research on democracy and democratization. I\u2019ve continued to study various aspects of prosocial behavior since then: social capital, tolerance, trust, etc. Studying generosity across cultures is thus a logical and exciting extension of my longstanding interests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back when I was in graduate school, I was having trouble picking my dissertation topic. Coming from the typical sociology \u201csocial problems\u201d perspective, I could not decide which social problem was important enough to study exclusively. One day I started &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/science-of-generosity\/2011\/01\/14\/615\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":108,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5932,5959,5960],"tags":[13329,13328,13327,5969,5968],"class_list":["post-615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-generosity-from-a-cross-cultural-perspective","category-prosocial-behavior","category-social-capital","tag-prosocial-behavior","tag-social-capital","tag-social-goods","tag-trust","tag-volunteering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/science-of-generosity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/science-of-generosity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/science-of-generosity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/science-of-generosity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/108"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/science-of-generosity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=615"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/science-of-generosity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":639,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/science-of-generosity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615\/revisions\/639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/science-of-generosity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/science-of-generosity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/science-of-generosity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}