Coping With COVID‐19's Demanding Collective Goals: Is a Normative Context in Favour of Governmental Measures Related to Social Cohesion?

ABSTRACT

The measures to limit COVID‐19 and the pandemic had deleterious effects on social cohesion. We propose that perceived clarity and coherence of governmental measures and perceived majority support of these measures together create a normative context that shapes social cohesion. Using a representative sample of adult Canadians ( N  = 1180) and a longitudinal design, we aim to (1) identify profiles of perceived clarity, coherence and majority support of governmental measures at three time points during the first year of the pandemic and (2) determine if the dynamics identified are associated with attitudes and behaviours capturing social cohesion at a later time. Results showed that two profiles for perceived clarity/coherence and for perceived majority support best described our data. For both profiles, about 75% of the sample was classified in a high‐level decreasing profile and 25% in a low‐level decreasing profile. The identified profiles were associated with social cohesion months later. Our results provide insights that could be used by governments to better plan the message sent to the population during a future crisis to maximize social cohesion.