Edelman, Trust, and People Like Me

It’s that time of year again. The Edelman Trust Barometer is out. As always, it provides us with important data on the one element that is central to every transaction we undertake, and that is trust.

The 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer presents a comprehensive snapshot of global trust trends, offering insights into the dynamics between institutions and the general public. In an era marked by rapid technological advancements, societal shifts, and geopolitical complexities, understanding trust has become more crucial than ever.

It’s no secret that trust is eroding across the board. We have seen in in the Edelman Barometer and can see it around us every day. Any “trusted” entity today is trusted only in relative terms….as in less mistrusted.

We don’t have to like it, but this is the world we are called to impact.

Inside the general gloom, there are some of the findings that can help us.

I think we agree things need to change, but people are more resistant than ever

People have real fear about change and innovation—and you can understand why

Two-in-five (40%) say that innovation is poorly managed, almost double the number who say it is well managed. This stretches across the demographic and geographic terrain. I would challenge you to look around and say, “yeah, things are being managed well.”

Looking to the future, people see mismanagement continuing. They don’t trust the government, big technology and they think that science is influenced by money and politics.

Worse yet, people feel that they are being left behind. For what it is worth, I think this attitude is a touchstone up there with right track/wrong path. People who feel they are being left behind don’t trust the people leaving them behind.

We have run out of messengers

Sadly, the world that is being skewered in the scene above, from The Simpsons Movie, is long gone.

We can no longer throw a white guy in a suit up there and be done with it.

It sounds like something out of Haight-Ashbury, but the research shows that more than sixty percent of people don’t trust “establishment” leaders to tell the truth. That includes government, journalists and business leaders.

Who do people trust? Scientists…and people like them.

I don’t know how to parse this science paradox—it shows potential at best. I fear that people trust science when it tells them something that makes them comfortable and distrust it when it tells them something that makes them uncomfortable. But there’s at least potential.

As for “people like them”…as uneasy as that might you feel…we need to face this brutal fact.

One idea is something I have used successfully numerous times: A Community Advisory Panel. First initiated during the early days of Right To Know, it brings “people like you” together and lets them immerse themselves in a subject over time and become the type of authority people want to follow. It has to be done right, with constructive critics included.

I don’t know. Nutty ideas. What about a reality-like show with “people like you.” Or where people question the scientist…even participate in experiments.

Specific Ideas for Better Communications

The survey does give us some specific guidance.

The first is that 45% of people says that scientists don’t know how to communicate with “people like me.” One problem, of course, is that most people sat in their high school science class and said that “they’d never use this in real life….” until they didn’t understand how a cell worked during COVID.

But it’s too late for that—we have to do better with the world that exists. We have to be more open for questions and bring ideas along slowly. Too fast, and we are lost from the beginning. (PRSA has some compelling content about “responsible storytelling in science.”)

Just as important is data in the survey which says we need to show people how innovations will lead to a better life. This is an interesting concept. Other data has shown that we have to do this in the concept of trade-offs…if we can do that, we might be able to bring more people along.

The Road Map

One last random idea. Look at how the auto companies are bringing automated cars along. They are SLOWLY introducing new ideas—self-braking, self-parking. Let people get used to the idea. Also—here’s the significant part. They are presenting them as premium options to make them something people aspire to as opposed to resisting.

Here’s what Edelman came up with as the recommendations—some of which are communication and some of which are not.

I’d just add this. The phrase that resonates through all of this is “people like me.” Our job is to build mutually beneficial relationships with our publics, and the step we need most is to have people feel like that includes them.