Does home comfort promote complacency?

Working as a volunteer in crisis regions or in social projects, petitioning, and taking part in political debates and demonstrations - there are a lot of opportunities for civic engagement. "Such activities are important for any democracy to function, although the specific content of civic engagement may differ across societies," says Dr. Maria K. Pavlova, a developmental psychologist from the University of Jena. For instance, she explains, private efforts to help the needy are much more common in the US than in the continental Europe, where the state takes over. "However, many factors that are known to foster civic engagement, such as high educational attainment, appear to be pretty universal."

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