Edelman Trust Barometer 2026: Right Diagnosis, Wrong Solution

The latest findings from the 2026 Acumen Edelman Trust Barometer highlight a growing crisis of trust and social fragmentation in New Zealand, raising deeper questions about inequality, power and the role of institutions in a rapidly changing world.

The 2026 Acumen Edelman Trust Barometer is out.

It finds we hate each other more than ever.

Surprise surprise…

From grievance to insularity: what the Trust Barometer reveals

From Grievance to insularity
The Acumen Edelman Trust Barometer is an annual global survey, now in its 26th year, produced internationally by the Edelman PR firm and run locally by Wellington-based consultancy Acumen. This year’s theme is “Trust Amid Insularity,” which follows last year’s “Crisis of Grievance.”
The progression is revealing. In 2025, the data showed a country seething with resentment toward a system it believed was rigged. In 2026, it shows something arguably worse: a population that has stopped engaging with people who think differently. People aren’t just angry, they’re retreating into their shells.
The headline insularity figure is striking. Three in four New Zealanders (76%) are now hesitant or outright unwilling to trust someone whose values, beliefs, approach to problem-solving, or cultural background differs from their own. Only 23% remain “open.” New Zealand’s 76% sits well above the global average of 70%.
Edelman’s story about the last few years is simple enough: first division, then grievance, now withdrawal. People think the country is split, think the system is rigged, and end up trusting only their own kind.

Why social trust in New Zealand is collapsing

…AI Bryce lays bare the bones of the argument, but I think it’s deeper than that.

We have raised the next generation of young women telling them every man will rape them and we have raised a generation of men telling them you will be accused of rape. The distrust between the genders, the manner in which culture war grievance and identity politics have atomised more and more and more until there is no mass movement left to protest. The way propertied boomers, polluters, Banks, Property Pimps and Corporations have seized all political power to ignore climate change and inequality.

How social media algorithms amplify division

We hate each other thanks to social media hate algorithms.

While we hate each other more than ever before, we are more lonely than we have ever been before.

We are lonelier, more depressed and sicker.

Our loneliness, our depression, our sickness are all fomenting the spin of social media hate algorithms which only further polarise our debate into All Tribe and No Village politics.

I think we are a clever ape who has evolved over 300,000 years. Because we have to compete against other sentient and self conscious clever apes and work with them as groups so our intelligence and ability to use tools could change our environment, we have had to bond and understand each other over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.

When we meet in person, our bodies and brains are taking in millions of different details subconsciously and we are working each other out through facial cues, pheromones, gait, stance, smiles, eye contact, etc etc etc: we have taken those 300,000 years of evolution and replaced that  with flat screen interaction where we lose all that unseen evolutionary advantage and instead become brainwashed and trapped in rabbit holes of demented reality.

Flat screen interaction is warping our human capacity to tell what is real. Without the physical presence of another human — without facial cues, tone, gait, posture — our evolved instincts fail us. Algorithms replace judgment. Rage replaces understanding.

We have become an ocean of spite and resentment in an All Tribe No Village politics distorted by social media hate algorithms because 300,000 years of evolution can’t work in a flat screen interaction loneliness.

Inequality, power and the erosion of democracy

People should feel angry that the elites are winning while playing us off against each other.

Why business is not the solution to the trust crisis

The 2026 Acumen Edelman Trust Barometer rightfully diagnose that we are bitter and disconnected, but their medicine that Business are the solution is a facade.

The survey shows people believe the system is rigged, that government serves the few, that the wealthy benefit unfairly because that is true!

Giving Corporations more power is not the solution, it’s the bloody cancer!

In 2010, the 388 richest individuals owned more wealth than half of the entire human population on Earth