The Social Contagion of Stress: How Workplace Gossip Affects Your Health

Stress can be contagious, and one of the primary vectors of transmission in the workplace is gossip. A clinical psychologist warns that engaging in or even just being exposed to toxic social behaviors like gossip can significantly increase your own stress levels, leading to negative physiological consequences for your health.
Gossip and workplace drama create an environment of negativity and mistrust. This puts your brain’s social threat detection system on high alert. Your body doesn’t distinguish between a physical threat and a social threat; it responds the same way, by flooding your system with stress hormones.
This “second-hand” stress can be just as damaging as the stress from your own workload. The expert notes that it contributes to the overall physiological burden that can lead to burnout, sleep problems, and physical pain. You are essentially absorbing the toxicity of the environment.
To inoculate yourself against this social contagion, it is crucial to maintain healthy emotional boundaries. The psychologist advises consciously “decoupling” from these behaviors. This means politely steering conversations away from gossip and choosing not to get enmeshed in colleagues’ personal conflicts. This act of social hygiene is a critical and often overlooked component of workplace wellness.