Passive-aggressive behavior
Passive-aggressive behavior is a category of interpersonal interactions characterised by an obstructionist or hostile manner that indicates aggression, or, in more general terms, expressing aggression in non-assertive, subtle (that is, passive or indirect) ways. It can be seen in some cases as a personality trait or disorder marked by a pervasive pattern of negative attitudes and passive, usually disavowed, resistance in interpersonal or occupational situations.
Passive-aggressive behavior should not be confused with passive resistance (also called conscientious objection). In conflict theory passive resistance is a rational response to demands that may simply be disagreed with. Passive-aggressive behavior should also not be confused with covert aggression (a behavior better described as catty), which consists of deliberate, active, but carefully veiled hostile acts and is distinctively different in character from the non-assertive style of passive aggression.[1]
Passive-aggressive behavior can manifest itself as learned helplessness, procrastination, hostility masquerading as jokes, stubbornness, resentment, sullenness, or deliberate/repeated failure to accomplish requested tasks for which one is (often explicitly) responsible.[2]
Signs and symptoms
The book “Living with the Passive-aggressive Man” lists 11 observations that may help identify passive-aggressive behavior:[3]
- Ambiguity and cryptic speech: a means of creating a feeling of insecurity in others or of disguising one’s own insecurities;
- Intentional inefficiency, e.g. being late or forgetting things, as a way to exert control or to punish;
- Convenient forgetfulness: to win any argument with a dishonest denial of actual events;
- Cold shoulder response: withdrawing into long silences to avoid either confronting or connecting with others.
- Fear of competition;
- Fear of dependency;
- Fear of intimacy as a means to act out anger: the passive-aggressive often cannot trust; because of this, they guard themselves against becoming intimately attached to someone;
- Making chaotic situations;
- Making excuses for non–performance in work teams;
- Obstructionism;
- Sulking;
- Victimization response: instead of recognizing one’s own weaknesses, tendency to blame others for own failures.
A passive-aggressive person may not display all of these behaviors.
In the workplace
Passive-aggressive behavior from workers and managers is damaging to team unity and productivity. Warner says that "We need to understand that this kind of passive-aggressive behavior means a challenge to any managers’ ability to achieve project goals — resulting in a team’s tasks never delivered in time or quality, or general sabotaging of the team’s productivity."[4] In workers, it can lead to sabotage of projects and the creation of a hostile environment. Passive aggressive coworkers can destroy workplace equilibrium. If this behaviour is ignored it could result in decreased office efficiency and frustration among workers.[5]In managers, it can end up stifling team creativity. De Angelis says "It would actually make perfect sense that those promoted to leadership positions might often be those who on the surface appear to be agreeable, diplomatic and supportive, yet who are actually dishonest, backstabbing saboteurs behind the scenes."[6][page needed]
Diagnosis as a personality disorder
DSM-IV Appendix B
| Personality disorders |
|---|
| Cluster A (odd) |
| Cluster B (dramatic) |
| Cluster C (anxious) |
| Not otherwise specified |
| Depressive |
| Others |
Passive-aggressive personality disorder was listed as an Axis II personality disorder in the DSM-III-R, but was moved in the DSM-IV to Appendix B ("Criteria Sets and Axes Provided for Further Study") because of controversy and the need for further research on how to also categorize the behaviors in a future edition. As an alternative, the diagnosis personality disorder not otherwise specified may be used instead.
The DSM-IV Appendix B definition is as follows:[7]
- A pervasive pattern of negativistic attitudes and passive resistance to demands for adequate performance, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by four (or more) of the following:
- passively resists fulfilling routine social and occupational tasks
- complains of being misunderstood and unappreciated by others
- is sullen and argumentative
- unreasonably criticizes and scorns authority
- expresses envy and resentment toward those apparently more fortunate
- voices exaggerated and persistent complaints of personal misfortune
- alternates between hostile defiance and contrition
- Does not occur exclusively during major depressive episodes and is not better accounted for by dysthymic disorder.
ICD-10
| Passive-aggressive behavior |
|---|
The World Health Organization's ICD-10 lists passive-aggressive personality disorder under (F60.8) Other specific personality disorders.
Millon's subtypes
The psychologist Theodore Millon has proposed four subtypes of 'negativist' ('passive-aggressive').[8] Any individual negativist may exhibit none or one of the following:
| Subtype | Description | Personality Traits |
|---|---|---|
| Vacillating | Including borderline features | Emotions fluctuate in bewildering, perplexing, and enigmatic ways; difficult to fathom or comprehend own capricious and mystifying moods; wavers, in flux, and irresolute both subjectively and intrapsychically. |
| Discontented | Including depressive features | Grumbling, petty, testy, crankly, embittered, complaining, fretful, vexed, and moody; gripes behind pretense; avoids confrontation; uses legitimate but trival complaints. |
| Circuitous | Including dependent features | Opposition displayed in a roundabout, labyrinthine, and ambiguous manner, e.g., procrastination, dawdling, forgetfulness, inefficiency, neglect, stubbornness, indirect and devious in venting resentment and resistant behaviors. |
| Abrasive | Including sadistic features | Contentious, intransigent, fractious, and quarrelsome; irritable, caustic, debasing, corrosive, and acrimonious, contradicts and derogates; few qualms and little conscience or remorse. |
Causes
Passive-aggressive disorder may stem from a specific childhood stimulus[9] (e.g., alcohol/drug addicted parents) in an environment where it was not safe to express frustration or anger. Families in which the honest expression of feelings is forbidden tend to teach children to repress and deny their feelings and to use other channels to express their frustration.
Children who sugarcoat hostility may have difficulties being assertive. Never developing better coping strategies or skills for self-expression, they can become adults who, beneath a "seductive veneer", "harbor vindictive intent", in the words of a US congressman psychologist and a writer/practicing therapist.[10] Alternatively individuals may simply have difficulty being as directly aggressive or assertive as others. Martin Kantor suggests three areas that contribute to passive-aggressive anger in individuals: conflicts about dependency, control, and competition.[11]
Murphy and Oberlin also see passive aggression as part of a larger umbrella of hidden anger stemming from ten traits of the angry child or adult. These traits include making one's own misery, the inability to analyze problems, blaming others, turning bad feelings into mad ones, attacking people, lacking empathy, using anger to gain power, confusing anger with self-esteem, and indulging in negative self-talk. Lastly, the authors point out that those who hide their anger can be nice when they wish to be. [12]
Treatment
Kantor suggests a treatment approach using psychodynamic, supportive, cognitive, behavioral and interpersonal therapeutic methods. These methods apply to both the passive-aggressive person and their target victim, according to Kantor, a retired Staff Psychiatrist for the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in New Jersey.[13]
History
Passive-aggressive behavior was first defined clinically by Colonel William Menninger during World War II in the context of men's reaction to military compliance.
Menninger described soldiers who were not openly defiant but expressed their aggressiveness “by passive measures, such as pouting, stubbornness, procrastination, inefficiency, and passive obstructionism” due to what Menninger saw as an "immaturity" and a reaction to "routine military stress".[14]
According to some psychoanalytic views, noncompliance is not indicative of true passive-aggressive behavior, which may instead be defined as the manifestation of emotions that have been repressed based on a self-imposed need for acceptance.
In the first version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM-I, in 1952, the passive-aggressive was defined in a narrow way, grouped together with the passive-dependent.
The DSM-III-R stated in 1987 that passive-aggressive disorder is typified by, among other things, "fail[ing] to do the laundry or to stock the kitchen with food because of procrastination and dawdling."[14]
A popular loosening of the definition of the term to include anything that's conveyed in written form has led to popular websites like Passive-Aggressive Notes that post and share purportedly passive-aggressive emails and notes.
See also
References
- ^ Simon, George (2010). In Sheep's Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People. Little Rock: Parkhurst Brothers. pp. 21–22. ISBN 978-1-935166-30-6.
- ^ Wetzler 1992, pp. 35–37.
- ^ Wetzler 1992, pp. 14–15.
- ^ Warner, Neil, Manage Passive Aggression In The Workplace.
- ^ Harms, Kimberly A, Passive Aggressive Behaviour in the Dental Office (3 ed.)
{{citation}}: Text "May-June, 2012" ignored (help). - ^ De Angelis, Paula, Blindsided: Recognizing and Dealing with Passive-Aggressive Leadership in the Workplace (Kindle ed.)
{{citation}}: Text "Jun 22, 2008" ignored (help). - ^ Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Fourth edition Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR) American Psychiatric Association (2000)
- ^ Millon, Theodore (2004), Personality Disorders in Modern Life.
- ^ Johnson, JG; Cohen, P; Brown, J; Smailes, EM; Bernstein, DP (July 1999). "Childhood maltreatment increases risk for personality disorders during early adulthood". Arch. Gen. Psychiatry. 56 (7): 600–6. doi:10.1001/archpsyc.56.7.600. PMID 10401504.
- ^ Tim, Murphy; Hoff Oberlin, Loriann (2005). Overcoming passive aggression: how to stop hidden anger from spoiling your relationships, career and happiness. New York: Marlowe & Company. p. 48. ISBN 1-56924-361-1. Retrieved April 27, 2010.
- ^ Kantor 2002, pp. xvi–xvii.
- ^ Tim, Murphy; Hoff Oberlin, Loriann (2005).
- ^ Kantor 2002, p. 115.
- ^ a b Lane, C (1 February 2009). "The Surprising History of Passive-Aggressive Personality Disorder" (PDF). Theory & Psychology. 19 (1): 55–70. doi:10.1177/0959354308101419.
Bibliography
- Kantor (2002), Passive-aggression: a guide for the therapist, the patient and the victim, Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, ISBN 0-275-97422-7, retrieved April 27, 2010
{{citation}}: Unknown parameter|ifrst=ignored (help). - Wetzler, Scott (1992), Living with the Passive-aggressive Man, Simon & Schuster, retrieved April 27th, 2010
{{citation}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help). - Oberlin, Loriann Hoff (2005), Overcoming Passive-Aggression: How to Stop Hidden Anger From Spoiling Your Relationships, Career and Happiness, Perseus, p. 45