When We Only Trust People Like Us

About this episode

David Bersoff discusses the shrinking trust circles in society and the implications for democracy and business.

David Bersoff, Head of Research at the Edelman Trust Institute, has spent decades measuring trust across the globe. His most striking finding right now isn't that trust is collapsing, it's that our trust circles are shrinking. We've reached a point where people who think differently, vote differently, or read different sources can barely get into each other's trust circles. When those circles stop overlapping, the bridges between us disappear, and democracy starts to strain. In this conversation, David unpacks what he calls insularity: the homogenization of trust to the point where 7 in 10 people hesitate to trust someone who is simply different from them. He also explains why trust isn't disappearing overall but becoming dangerously uneven, with the gap between those who feel institutions work for them and those who feel the system is stacked against them widening every year. We dig into why employers have become the unlikely safe harbour of trust, what "certainty bubbles" can teach businesses navigating uncertainty, and why trust brokering, helping groups understand each other rather than trying to change each other, may be the most realistic path forward in today's climate…

People in this episode

Host: Severin de Wit

Guest: David Bersoff

Topics covered

• trust
• democracy
• insularity
• business
• society

Keywords

• trust
• insularity
• democracy
• certainty bubbles
• trust brokering

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Edelman Trust Institute

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