Edelman Trust Barometer Finds Insularity Reshaping Trust and Leadership

If it feels harder than ever to break through, build common ground, or even agree on basic facts, the 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer puts real data behind that instinct. Seven in 10 people globally now say they are unwilling or hesitant to trust someone who holds different values, perspectives, or sources of information. In developed markets, that number climbs even higher, including Japan at 90 percent, Germany at 81 percent, the UK at 76 percent, Canada at 73 percent, and the U.S. at 70 percent. Insularity is no longer a fringe behavior. It has become a defining feature of how people process information, form opinions, and decide who deserves their trust.

Richard Edelman frames this shift as a retreat from openness and shared progress. “We are choosing a closed ecosystem of trust that mandates a limited worldview, a narrowing of opinion, intellectual stasis, and cultural rigidity,” he writes. “We are withdrawing from dialogue and compromise. We opt for the safety of the familiar over the perceived risk of innovation. We prefer nationalism to global connection. We choose individual benefit over common advancement, the Me over the We.”

For communicators, this explains why even well-intended messaging can feel like it is hitting a wall. Audiences are narrowing who they listen to. Trust is concentrating closer to home in one’s employer, CEO, coworkers, neighbors, and personal networks, while skepticism toward institutions, media, and distant leadership continues to grow. Nearly seven in 10 respondents now fear institutional leaders are deliberately misleading the public. That is a tough environment for anyone responsible for reputation, credibility, and long-term brand trust.

What is fueling this pull inward? The Barometer points to a mix of economic anxiety, declining optimism, eroding institutional confidence, and an ongoing information crisis. Two-thirds of employees worry that trade policies and tariffs will hurt their employer. Many workers, especially in lower and middle income groups, fear generative AI will leave them behind rather than lift them up. Only 32 percent of people believe the next generation will be better off. At the same time, misinformation concerns remain high and fewer people regularly consume viewpoints that differ from their own.

Those pressures are already showing up in the business landscape. Trust increasingly favors domestic companies over foreign competitors. More than one-third of respondents would accept higher prices and fewer choices to limit foreign companies in their home markets. Inside organizations, values alignment is becoming a real workforce issue, with 42 percent of employees saying they would rather change departments than report to a manager with very different beliefs.

The Trust Barometer also highlights a widening mass class trust divide that has more than doubled since 2012. The U.S. now shows the largest income-based trust gap at 29 points. For communicators, that matters because economic anxiety shapes how messages about innovation, automation, sustainability, and growth are received. Tone, empathy, and clarity are no longer soft skills. They are credibility drivers.

There is, however, a clear opportunity buried inside the data. Edelman argues that organizations can counter insularity through what he calls Trust Brokering. “The primary Trust Broker must be My Employer, proximate and reliable,” he writes. Employees trust their employer more than any other institution and see it as the only one consistently doing a credible job of bridging divides and creating space for constructive dialogue. CEOs are expected to lead that effort by listening across differences, engaging critics productively, and showing how values translate into real decisions.

For communications leaders, this puts internal communications, leadership visibility, employee listening, and culture storytelling at the center of the trust equation. The workplace has become one of the few environments where people still feel comfortable having difficult conversations when expectations and behavioral norms are clear. That creates both responsibility and opportunity for comms teams to shape how leaders show up, how feedback flows, and how trust is reinforced day to day.

The data also reinforces the growing influence of trusted third-party voices. Many people say they would reconsider a company they currently distrust if it were vouched for by someone they already trust, particularly creators and subject-matter voices. That raises the bar for authenticity, alignment, and long-term relationship building in influencer and earned media strategies.

The big takeaway for communicators is simple but demanding. Trust today is built less through scale and more through proximity, consistency, and leadership behavior. In a world where audiences are pulling inward and filtering harder, communicators are being asked to help organizations earn credibility one conversation, one decision, and one relationship at a time.