The COVID-19 pandemic eroded system support but not social solidarity

TY - JOUR

T1 - The COVID-19 pandemic eroded system support but not social solidarity

AU - Bor, Alexander

AU - Jørgensen, Frederik

AU - Petersen, Michael Bang

N1 - Publisher Copyright: Copyright: © 2023 Bor et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

PY - 2023/8/17

Y1 - 2023/8/17

N2 - While the World was busy mitigating the disastrous health and economic effects of the novel coronavirus, a less direct, but not less concerning peril has largely remained unexplored: the COVID-19 crisis may have disrupted some of the most fundamental social and political relationships in democratic societies. We interviewed samples resembling the national population of Denmark, Hungary, Italy and the US three times: in April, June and December of 2020 (14K observations). We show that multiple (but not all) measures of support for the political system decreased between April and December. Exploiting the panel setup, we demonstrate that within-respondent increases in indicators of pandemic fatigue (specifically, the perceived subjective burden of the pandemic and feelings of anomie) correspond to decreases in system support and increases in extreme anti-systemic attitudes. At the same time, we find no systematic trends in feelings of social solidarity, which are largely unaffected by changes in pandemic burden.

AB - While the World was busy mitigating the disastrous health and economic effects of the novel coronavirus, a less direct, but not less concerning peril has largely remained unexplored: the COVID-19 crisis may have disrupted some of the most fundamental social and political relationships in democratic societies. We interviewed samples resembling the national population of Denmark, Hungary, Italy and the US three times: in April, June and December of 2020 (14K observations). We show that multiple (but not all) measures of support for the political system decreased between April and December. Exploiting the panel setup, we demonstrate that within-respondent increases in indicators of pandemic fatigue (specifically, the perceived subjective burden of the pandemic and feelings of anomie) correspond to decreases in system support and increases in extreme anti-systemic attitudes. At the same time, we find no systematic trends in feelings of social solidarity, which are largely unaffected by changes in pandemic burden.

KW - COVID-19/epidemiology

KW - Disasters

KW - Emotions

KW - Humans

KW - Pandemics

KW - SARS-CoV-2

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85168278468&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0288644

DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0288644

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 37590308

AN - SCOPUS:85168278468

SN - 1932-6203

VL - 18

JO - PLOS ONE

JF - PLOS ONE

IS - 8

M1 - e0288644

ER -