Global Edelman surveys shows people trust businesses to lead… 

January 27th, 2024

Thanks joining us this morning. Three weeks ago, we wrote about America’s declining trust in its institutions. We’re writing again about trust today, but in a very different context focused on business and technology development, not politics.

Every year, Edelman publishes the Edelman Trust Barometer based on tens of thousands of survey responses across 28 countries. The 2024 results, released this month, focus on reaction to society-altering innovations.

We’re not talking about the comparatively minor (though still important) innovations that drive improvements in existing industries. We’re talking about the major, world-impacting innovations that fundamentally change our lives: artificial intelligence, green energy, gene-based therapies, genetically-modified foods, and more.

According to Edelman, this year’s survey “reveals a new paradox at the heart of society. Rapid innovation offers the promise of a new era of prosperity, but instead risks exacerbating trust issues, leading to further societal instability and political polarization.”

***

World-changing innovations have always bred distrust and uncertainty. Will this new medicine cure or harm me? Will this new technology replace my job?

The most famous example of this sentiment are the Luddites, an early 19^th-century group of artisans who broke into factories and smashed new textile machines.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that global sentiment today is at once excited and suspicious as the world progresses at an accelerating pace. The Edelman data offers insight into who people believe will tell them the truth about that change, an important first step in societal acceptance of change.

People trust government leaders and journalists the least. This seems to present a problem, as elected officials and the media generally communicate the most with the public. But government and media are viewed as both incompetent and unethical, which means any message they deliver will be viewed suspiciously from the start.

Source: 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer

The only groups trusted to tell the truth about new innovations and technologies are scientists, “someone like me,” and company technical experts.

What do these groups have in common? The presumption of no ulterior motives. Trust in scientists took a hit during COVID – 67% of American respondents believe science has become politicized. But scientists still generally enjoy a just-the-facts-ma’am reputation, as do technical experts.

Trusting ”someone like me” likely represents the counterforce to distrusting journalists and government leaders. I can’t trust them to shoot it to me straight, but my neighbor or friend at church will see things like I do.

Why does any of this matter? Well, innovation is inevitable, and that’s generally a good thing. But fear of new things can prompt deep ruptures in society and call into question the very economic and political system that brought change about.

According to the Edelman data, when innovation disrupts – or when people view their institutions as managing innovation’s emergence poorly – people tend to believe the system favors the rich and that capitalism does more harm than good.

Source: 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer

That’s an extraordinarily dangerous trend and one leaders at all levels and in all sectors should take seriously, especially in an era of accelerating technological disruption.

Combined with distrust in institutions generally and intensifying polarization, mismanaged “creative destruction” could be explosive.

What’s the takeaway? The Edelman data seems to align with what other surveys have signaled for years: communication designed to prompt behavioral change, rather than communication designed to share the plain truth and let people act for themselves, breeds long-term distrust.

We saw this during COVID. Overpromising and oversimplifying the impacts of masks, vaccines, and shutdowns certainly prompted the short-term behavioral change that public health authorities desired. But as the full picture emerged – masks aren’t always protective; vaccines help but they don’t stop transmission; two weeks didn’t “flatten the curve” – large proportions of the population stopped trusting.

Likewise with institutions that adopted increasingly ideological postures during the Trump years and especially after George Floyd’s death. Yes, people will be on board with incremental and reasoned reform in the face of high-profile incidents. But overwrought declarations – Georgia’s election reforms are Jim Crow 2.0; America is irredeemably racist; MAGA supporters invite fascism – go too far. They push vast swathes of the public away, breeding yet more distrust and division.

These lessons are still controversial and some disagree with them, but the data from Edelman and other surveys should be a flashing red light warning the communications tactics employed in the recent past aren’t working.

The new Argentinian president’s rise to international stardom after one speech underscores this point.

He set Davos on fire with a blunt, plain message that went out of its way to abandon the sentiment that’s prevailed in recent years.

“Unfortunately, in recent decades, motivated by some well-meaning individuals willing to help others, and others motivated by the wish to belong to a privileged caste, the main leaders of the Western world have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call collectivism.”

Trust is hard-earned and easily lost. How leaders of all stripes communicate about disruptive change will determine whether or not societies embrace it.