Why neighbor feuds bring out the absolute worst in us

And what you can do to keep petty drama from escalating into all-out warfare.

I consider myself to be a considerate, level-headed, and rational person in public — I ensure my grocery cart doesn’t block fellow shoppers and keep my eyes on the road when a souped-up F250 driver flips me off for going the speed limit.

But when I arrive back at my apartment complex to find a strange car parked in my reserved, shaded space that I pay a hefty monthly fee for — which happens often — any semblance of emotional maturity goes out the window. In the rare instances I catch the culprit, I resort to my reactive, hormonally turbulent pre-teen self, spewing profanities at them (which they’ll sometimes hurl back). I have also expeditiously called a tow company, knowing full well it’ll cost the owner hundreds of dollars to retrieve their vehicle.

Deep down, I know that my blinding rage isn’t really about my ability to park at all (I could simply leave my car in an unreserved spot and move on with my life). There’s something a lot deeper and more psychological brewing when it comes to neighbor feuds. “Where we live is where we form our identity, the story we tell ourselves about who we are,” Bob Bordone, author of the book Conflict Resilience: Negotiating Disagreement Without Giving Up or Giving In and former director for the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program, tells Vox. “A lot of times, neighbor conflicts are about more than whatever it is we may be disagreeing on.”

Here’s exactly why neighbor feuds tend to bring out the worst in us — and what you can do if you feel like you’re going to completely explode on the person across the street.

Surface-level tiffs have deeper roots, and are often about our sense of identity and morality

Americans are, at a baseline, fairly suspicious of others, and things have gotten worse over time: The number of adults in the US who believe “most people can be trusted” dipped from 46% in 1972 to 34% in 2018, according to numbers from the General Social Survey from Pew Research Center. Pew also notes that people who do trust others are more likely to engage in neighborly tasks that facilitate relationships, like bringing in the mail or watering plants.

The pandemic also shifted the way we view strangers, with some data suggesting it caused us to be less trusting of others. And the presence of Ring cameras and other doorbell cams, which 62 percent of respondents in a 2025 US News & World Report survey said they owned, probably aren’t helping. As Allie Volpe recently reported for Vox, though the surveillance tools are designed to help people feel safer in their homes, they might make you more paranoid and fearful. “If you don’t have actual........

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