Sociological Analysis of the Relationship between Social Capital and Cultural Intelligence among the Students of Tabriz University

Cultural intelligence is defined as a new pattern of learning ability in cultural interactions and presentation of appropriate behavioral responses to these patterns. Regarding the fact that universities are among the places where young people of different cultures and ethnic groups interact with each other, the objective of the present study is to evaluate the state of students' cultural intelligence and its relationship with social capital. The present study was conducted using a survey research. The population of the study consisted of all students of Tabriz University in the academic year of 2013-2014. A 384 participant sample was selected using stratified sampling. The findings of the research indicated that the degree of cultural intelligence of 39.06 percent of the participants was at the moderate level, 19.28 percent of them were at the low level, and 41.66 percent of the participants were at the high level. Furthermore, other findings of the study indicate that, there is a direct correlation between social capital and its dimensions (social trust, social participation and social support) and cultural intelligence and its dimensions (behavioral, motivational, cognitive, and meta-cognitive dimensions). In addition, social capital explained 23 percent of the variations of participants' cultural intelligence.