Why People Won't Trust Different Values
The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer finds that a large share of people globally are unwilling or hesitant to trust those with different values, backgrounds, or information sources, marking what the report describes as a shift from grievance into insularity driven by economic anxiety and eroding faith in institutions.
Edelman's annual Trust Barometer has tracked public sentiment for years, and the 2026 edition lands with a sobering finding: a significant majority of respondents worldwide say they won't or can't trust someone who holds different values, comes from a different background, or relies on different information sources. That is not a fringe finding. That is most people, in most countries, saying they have closed the door on the unfamiliar.
Global Insularity Reaches Staggering Levels
The headline figure is striking enough. The country-level data makes it harder to dismiss as a quirk. Japan shows especially high levels of insularity, with a large majority of Japanese respondents expressing reluctance to trust people with different values or information sources. Germany, the UK, Canada, and the U.S. also show notably high levels.
These are not fragile democracies or conflict zones. They are wealthy, stable nations with deep institutional histories. Yet their populations are retreating into tight circles of familiarity.
The report describes this as the endpoint of a slide: from grievance into insularity. Each stage fed the next. Fear bred polarization. Polarization hardened into grievance. Grievance has now calcified into something more static, more inward-looking.
What Is Driving People Inward
Multiple forces are pushing this shift, and they are interconnected. Economic anxiety sits at the center. A minority of respondents globally believe the next generation will be better off. In several major European economies, that number is especially low. The U.S. also shows notable pessimism.
When people stop believing in upward mobility, they stop investing in the broader social contract. Why extend trust outward when the system feels rigged?
Trade uncertainty and AI disruption deepen that anxiety. A significant share of employees worry that trade policies and tariffs will hurt their employer. Low-income respondents are more likely than middle-income respondents to believe they will be left behind by generative AI.
The information crisis adds another layer. A majority worry that foreign actors are injecting falsehoods into national media to inflame domestic divisions. Whether those fears are always justified hardly matters. The perception alone reshapes behavior.
Institutional Trust Is Collapsing, But Unevenly
Low-income respondents see institutions as less competent and less ethical than high-income respondents see them. The trust gap between economic classes is not just about disagreement over policy. It is about fundamentally different lived experiences of institutional reliability.
Business stands out as an institution that is seen as both ethical and competent by many respondents. That is a notable distinction. People tend to trust their own CEO more than their fellow citizens or even their neighbors.
Insularity Cuts Across Every Demographic
One of the more unsettling details is that insularity does not map neatly onto one political tribe, age group, or income bracket. The pattern appears across income, gender, and age, and it affects both developing and developed markets. This is not a story about one side retreating. It is a story about everyone retreating, simultaneously.
That makes the problem structurally different from standard partisan divides. If only one group were closing off, you could target outreach or rebuild bridges in one direction. When insularity is widespread, the walls go up on all sides at once.
What comes next depends on whether institutions can regain basic credibility. The data offers little reason for optimism right now. When a large majority of a country's population expresses reluctance to trust those who are different, the distance between neighbors is no longer metaphorical. It is measurable, and it is growing.
So here is a question worth sitting with: if you can't trust your fellow citizens, and you don't believe institutions will protect you, where do you turn? And what happens to a society when the honest answer for most people is 'nowhere'?
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