Why Your Neighborhood Needs Gossip

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Many people would reflexively use words like “toxic” or “unpleasant” to describe a neighborhood with an active gossip network, but I believe that this attitude is misguided. A sense of belonging and interconnectedness is the most essential feature of a cohesive neighborhood, and gossip is the glue that makes this happen. The number of neighbors that one can identify by first name is a reliable predictor of a strong sense of community, and it is hard to know who people are if we never get to talk about them. In many ways, neighborhood busybodies perform a greatly underrated and necessary social function.

And besides, if the only person you are willing to talk about is yourself, your neighbors will quickly decide that you are a pretty boring person.

Why Gossip Gets a Bad Rap

If one of your neighbors described you to someone else as a “gossip,” you may not consider it a compliment; in fact, you would probably feel insulted. There is no question that gossip has gotten a bad rap, but I believe that is because most of us define gossip too narrowly as mean-spirited, false, spiteful talk about individuals who are not present to defend themselves.

We also tend to think of gossip as something that other people do, and we fail to recognize how many of our own conversations qualify as gossip. Because we think of gossip as a bad thing, and because we like to think of ourselves as good people, we feel compelled to describe our own behavior as something other than gossip. When we are discussing other people, we prefer to think that we are “expressing concern” (as in, “Did you hear about Mary? Bless her heart...”) or “sharing important information” (as in, “Listen, there is something that you really need to know...”), but let’s face facts: You gossip a lot more than you think you do.

How Gossip Benefits a Neighborhood

Gossip can be a way of monitoring the life of the neighborhood and protecting it from predators and other bad actors who wish to do us harm, and neighbors sharing gossip is a way of resolving the uncertainty surrounding out-of-the-ordinary behavior. For example, neighbors are often the first to sound the alarm about potential mass shooters. At least seven callers warned authorities about the Parkland, Florida, high school shooter, with one neighbor even reporting that she knew he was going to shoot up a school, but she just did not know which school or when it would happen. Similarly, neighbors warned police about Michigan school shooter Ethan Crumbley before he went on his rampage.

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Gossip among neighbors is routinely an essential first step in helping law enforcement determine if suspicious activity at a house reflects illegal drug activity or something more benign, which means that the more than 25,000 Neighborhood Watch groups in North America are basically just formally organized gossip networks.

Gossip can also be a mechanism for keeping troublemakers in line and forcing us all to be good citizens. In my own neighborhood, gossip about what was going on in the backyard of a reclusive neighbor helped to identify an illegal automobile repair business, and other gossip alerted the neighborhood about a poorly controlled, very dangerous dog that was eventually removed by authorities.

Knowing that our reputations are being evaluated by others makes us do the right thing when it comes to respecting informal neighborhood policies about maintaining our properties, cleaning up trash, returning borrowed items, and making too much noise late at night. Consequently, the gossip network also helps new neighbors learn the unofficial rules of the neighborhood that people will usually not come right out and tell them directly.

Studies by anthropologists in real-life groups as diverse as hunter-gatherer societies, California cattle ranchers, Maine lobster fishermen, and college rowing teams confirm that gossip has been used in these quite different settings to enforce group norms when individuals failed to live up to the standards that the group had set for them. In all of these groups, individuals who cheated and violated expectations about sharing resources and meeting responsibilities became frequent targets of gossip and ostracism, which put pressure on them to change their ways.

Neighborhoods are no different.

Finally, gossip creates bonds between neighbors. People get to know each other through casual day-to-day chit-chat about neighborhood business, and people come to trust each other through gossip. Sharing sensitive information with another person is a sign of trust; it shows that you believe that this person will not use the information in an irresponsible way. My wife and I allow our next-door neighbors to keep a key to our house, which is something that would never have happened without the informal vetting provided by opportunities for gossip.

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Through gossip, we come to know who the “good” gossipers are and who the “bad” gossipers are, which helps us to ascertain the truthfulness of the news that we hear. Skillful gossipers are usually very popular people who are influential members of the community. They have a reputation for knowing what is going on, but they are also trusted to be discreet when sensitive information is shared with them.

Bad gossipers, on the other hand, are often perceived as either clueless blabbermouths who indiscriminately share everything they hear, or as transparently vicious and manipulative backstabbers. In either case, no one trusts them to keep gossip to themselves.

Whether you intend it or not, becoming a holier-than-thou gossip naysayer tells your neighbors that you do not trust them and that you do not wish to be part of their social network, and this will not endear you to anyone. Why? Because we feel subtle pressure to reciprocate the levels of self-disclosure, helpfulness—and yes, trust—that we receive from others. And so, if your aloofness signals a lack of trust or interest in others, that is exactly what you will receive back in return.

Just as any social group without gossip is not really a social group, a neighborhood without gossip is not really a neighborhood.